Link: Music industry woes demonstrate the power of the Web to remove the middle man – Gizmodo

Record Labels: Change or Die

Nice, big-picture overview of how the Internet has affected the music industry:

> Previous business structures made sense when production, marketing and distribution of music were prohibitively expensive and difficult, and when sales were in the millions of $15 units.

> Want a recording studio? Invest a few thousand dollars for software and hardware.

> Want to market? Hit the blogs. Post your tunes on the Web. Open an online store.

> But some musicians don’t want to deal with the business side of their careers, so opportunities still exist for managers and labels.

> Labels still offer a suite of centralized services and (in some cases) reputation enhancement that are useful.

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