For much of the past decade, we’ve been witness to the music industry eroding in a truly historic fashion. This tends to happen in industries when a new invention comes along to make it obsolete. Horse and buggy manufacturers experienced this with the rise of the automobile. Candle makers spiraled into poverty due to the light bulb. Even the recording industry itself replaced the “booming” sheet music industry in the mid-20th Century thanks to technology that allowed music to be recorded and sold. This allowed for a small empire to be built on records, eight-tracks, cassettes and ultimately CDs, creating unfathomably wealthy artists and executives who traipsed the globe and lived in palaces. Then MP3 technology was born, the tsunami of illegal downloads hit without warning, and worldwide recording industry revenues were cut in half in less than a decade—a loss of over 20 billion dollars.
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