What the internet did to newspapers was nationalize, if not globalize, their competition. Papers used to have a geographical near-monopoly that they leveraged to get ad revenue and newspaper sales. It is very rare for an American city to have two major newspapers, and has been for decades.
But the internet put local papers in direct competition with every other paper with a web page. Which other city's paper (besides Washington) is going to compete with the NY Times' international coverage? Which is going to compete with the Wall Street Journal's business section? So what you're getting is something more like the national magazine market which has been a couple-three majors and a field of minors for a while now: Car & Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend and then a lot of niche publications; Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and a another field of alternative and niche pubs.
What remains of the local market is keeping some papers afloat, but many will simply not have enough of a local market or won't find a way to leverage it well enough to survive. Once the loyalist zombies (those who have always gotten the paper and continue to, even though they don't read it) completely fall off it'll be even harder. The only thing that attracts readers to our little small-town paper is the obits and pictures of local sports.
The market has just changed around them, and no matter how good a job they changing with it, it's going to look like hell for most of them.
Two points: The music industry, as opposed to musicians, is in trouble because their product -- the creation of physical media and the creation, maintenance and control of distribution channels -- has gone away. Their product was never music. The technology enabled them to do that because everything was locked in physical media that lent itself to control. The new technology opens up not only distribution (to copying), but creation and so on. Once all the new avenues are opened up the same way piracy has been, things will be different.
I would think the vast majority of musicians can earn as much as before or more, because really, there weren't that many rock-star level bands compared to the number of people who just made or played music. The industry concentrated and controlled profits so it could skim off the cream. It was an artificial system that relied on technology and up-front money to work. Now that the technology has changed and up-front money can be replaced by other technologies (for creation or marketing), the need for the industry around the music will change, and the parasites will drop off.
It is the end of an anomalous era. In the past rock-star level composers had patrons to keep them going. Musicians made what they made from the crowd they could get in front of.
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Competition between newspapers is killing newspapers
What the internet did to newspapers was nationalize, if not globalize, their competition. Papers used to have a geographical near-monopoly that they leveraged to get ad revenue and newspaper sales. It is very rare for an American city to have two major newspapers, and has been for decades.
But the internet put local papers in direct competition with every other paper with a web page. Which other city's paper (besides Washington) is going to compete with the NY Times' international coverage? Which is going to compete with the Wall Street Journal's business section? So what you're getting is something more like the national magazine market which has been a couple-three majors and a field of minors for a while now: Car & Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend and then a lot of niche publications; Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and a another field of alternative and niche pubs.
What remains of the local market is keeping some papers afloat, but many will simply not have enough of a local market or won't find a way to leverage it well enough to survive. Once the loyalist zombies (those who have always gotten the paper and continue to, even though they don't read it) completely fall off it'll be even harder. The only thing that attracts readers to our little small-town paper is the obits and pictures of local sports.
The market has just changed around them, and no matter how good a job they changing with it, it's going to look like hell for most of them.
He's being made redundant and doesn't like it
Two points: The music industry, as opposed to musicians, is in trouble because their product -- the creation of physical media and the creation, maintenance and control of distribution channels -- has gone away. Their product was never music. The technology enabled them to do that because everything was locked in physical media that lent itself to control. The new technology opens up not only distribution (to copying), but creation and so on. Once all the new avenues are opened up the same way piracy has been, things will be different.
I would think the vast majority of musicians can earn as much as before or more, because really, there weren't that many rock-star level bands compared to the number of people who just made or played music. The industry concentrated and controlled profits so it could skim off the cream. It was an artificial system that relied on technology and up-front money to work. Now that the technology has changed and up-front money can be replaced by other technologies (for creation or marketing), the need for the industry around the music will change, and the parasites will drop off.
It is the end of an anomalous era. In the past rock-star level composers had patrons to keep them going. Musicians made what they made from the crowd they could get in front of.