If you’re a first generation watcher of MTV, you must remember the year 1984 and  Band Aid. Bob Geldof and other musicians from Duran Duran, Genesis, Culture Club, The Police and U2 teamed up to make a record which would raise money to buy food for starving people in Africa.

How? Through record sales. In other words: Capitalism.

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They didn’t demand that any government should pay the tab for the recording, production or distribution of their product. They relied on the free market system to solve the problem.

There was no politically correct objection to the song’s refrain which clearly references “Christmas” by saying “feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again.” (more…)

Never before has music been so easy to create, distribute, and obtain. And never before has it been less inspired and inspiring; never before has it been so inconsequential to human affairs. The villain behind this terrible irony? Ones and zeros.

The digitization of music, while in some ways advantageous (and in any case inevitable), has nonetheless resulted in profoundly deleterious effects from which all of the music industry’s current woes emanate. Let us count the ways.

Digitization has democratized the processes of musical composition and recording, beckoning the masses to participate in once rarefied and expensive art forms.

To be an artist was once to be elite by definition. Artistic mastery which the public revered (and, if you were lucky, payed for), was obtainable only through years of sacrifice, study, and struggle. This arduous and uncertain life had the glorious effect of weeding out all but the most dedicated and talented from the artistic professions. (more…)