This is all true if you are looking at the problem and not the cause.
But if you look at the roots of the problem, it is the same issue that has plagued the music business since it's inception. Intellectual property, what it is, and how you market it. That is the music business. Focusing on performance, saying shut up and perform and be a real "worker", is an easy way to make irrelevant the last 120 years; I don't see that as a reasonable conclusion, it's purely pragmatic, and a rather outdated approach. It glazes over the intellectual property aspect which is fundamental. For example -- is writing worthless, then? If you can write music but can't perform it, you're just sh*t out of luck in that scenario. Because when music sales fail, when intellectual property can be so easily stolen and appropriated, it subverts other old-fashioned ways of making a living from music such as writing and publishing as well. I appreciate the pragmatic, and that simpler/old-fashioned is better sometimes, but that is not a progressive or entirely relevant position. And blaming the fans/sometimes-customers isn't really a helpful way of figuring out why the market is running into the problems it does. Convenience is impossible to compete with; when something is free, it's ridiculous to expect people to go pay for it anyway. We live in individualistic societies, "doing the right thing" does not drive markets. I sure wish it did. This is capitalism, and capitalism demands viable products, safeguards that protect that viability, etc (hence we have the RIAA desperately suing people). The internet as we know it may not exist for that much longer. That is the only conclusion I can come to. But I really don't have an answer. If I did I'd be rich and famous.
