Technology is changing the recorded music business, as it is changing all businesses. 10 years ago, music piracy was seen as the great threat to the future of music. It’s since been largely replaced by music streaming—in the minds of many musicians, not much of an improvement. For classical musicians in particular, this seems a knotty problem: classical music is a highly specialized art form, and so of course will never appeal to a mass market. And without a large audience, the revenues of music streaming don’t amount to much. But there are opportunities in the interconnected world too. The digital market is more than just an amorphous popular audience, and many of the complaints and worries about online music consumption stem from fundamental misunderstandings about how digital economies work.
Music for a New World
On music streaming and piracy
