Koleman Strumpf seems to be the most optimistic of all commentators by saying the record business can't really fizzle away. He brings up good points, but a lot of his statistics are from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's which is important to take a look at, however, the more recent years would seem to be the most important to me. I wish he would have have looked more into that data.
Fredric Dannen I think brings up a good point when he says, "The industry could have adopted and embraced MP3 as the new dominant format, had it understood why it was unstoppable. But the business’ failure to understand has been striking for its persistence." Technology is always changing and business's have to follow the advances too or will crash and burn. Really, this has been for all industries and for the music industry to try to spend money opposing it instead of embracing it was clearly a regrettable decision.
My favorite of all the commentators was George Drakoulias. With all the possible ways for anyone to share music with others we see a lot more good music, but at the same time a lot more BAD music. That and no one seems to commit to bands anymore or wear clothes with bands. All we see is shirts with bands like AC/DC. Don't get me wrong that's probably my favorite "time period" for music so I can see why, but it's sad people don't embrace that sorta thing with new music too.
Peter Rojas jumps straight to the point by saying "the Internet happened" which honestly says it all. The Internet is with out a doubt why the record industry declines and it's as simple as that.
Then finally Steve Gottlieb who has important things to say, but for the interest of your time I can say he basically just says the same thing as Fredric Dannen.
@Karl-- Yes, in retrospect, the music industry made a HUGE error by trying to squash the MP3 and P2P file sharing. And, you're right, Drakoulias makes an excellent point about the proliferation of both good and bad music. There is a lot more truly awful music out there. And I say that as someone who came of age during the heyday of hardcore DIY punk rock, much of which was just plain bad. But-- personally-- I'd rather listen to bad music made by people having fun and expressing themselves than "polished" music by corporate puppets.
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