July 24th, 2007

I don’t know if you have ever read The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, but it’s a great blog outlining a lot of things relating to Apple, the tech industry in general, and lots of funny smack talk (assuming you’re a Mac nerd).

Anyway, one of his more recent posts is in regards to the dying breed of music industry execs, and I thought this quote summed the whole racket up.

Here’s the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them.

Whether or not you’re an Apple fan or not, they and other online retailers, along with cheaper & better independent recording studios - like my brother’s recording studio, for example - have made it easier for artists to get their music out without having to mortgage their futures and lives away. This will hopefully bring down costs and give the consumer more choice.

Or at least that’s the idea.

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