Downloadable music and the rebirth of an Industry

I watched a news story the other day that said legit music downloads (ie. iTunes) were up hundreds of millions of dollars over the previous year, while CD sales were down billions of dollars. On the one hand, I thought this might be a good thing; a lot of albums are just filler anyways, so why not just release the songs that are actually listenable? As well, while CD sales certainly aren't the reason we're going to run out of oil soon, a few less of them might give us a a couple more trips up to the cottage before the economy collapses. And though I'm not one of them, some people might enjoy seeing music industry stars live a little less lavishly (sorry folks, but as pampered as music stars are, there are people out there who live a lot more comfortably for a lot less work).

Aesthetically, I'm not quite as happy about this situation; I'd like to see digital music downloads come with the kind of art work we'd see inside a CD sleeve, but I doubt that will happen if it just adds to overhead costs. There's also something to be said for actually owning something, something tangible and real. And of course, there's the Metallica argument: songs are not atomistic, they're part of a larger whole, an album that's a snapshot of the artist at that particular moment of their career.

This situation with downloadable music isn't the death of the music industry, but it's perhaps the death of the music industry as we know it - which is fine, the music industry as we know has only been that way for a couple of decades. I remember an interview with John Mellencamp where he said back in the Seventies, when record labels were typically privately owned, there was a lot more artistic freedom for musicians. If you had an idea for an album, you pitched it to the (company) president, and got the thumbs up or thumbs down. With publicly owned labels, the focus is on maximizing stock prices for shareholders. Thus, we see the death of innovation in the industry, as music companies push new versions of previously successful formulas (Britney Spears clones) instead of searching for something new.