Technology Is Destroying The Music Industry, Which Is Great For The Next Taylor Swift

...[T]he thing that terrified the music industry more than anything else was the arrival of services like Napster and AudioGalaxy, which allowed people to share music over the internet without it costing them anything. The music industry was horrified, it saw people exchanging digital copies that didn’t degrade with each transfer, something that stopped tapes being a huge threat.

But it wasn’t the internet that killed the music industry. In fact, everything is still looking rosy for many musicians and labels. Taylor Swift has had a good year, and her latest album is likely to be making her very wealthy indeed. And that won’t change in all likelihood, not for Swift, and not for those who come after her. There is always going to be public demand for music, as there has been for hundreds or even thousands of years. The human brain is wired to enjoy the patterns of music, so a musical beat is something we will always seek out.

So how will technology kill the music industry then? Well, it will simply destroy the record label. The reason is simple. Record labels are a man in the middle that simply doesn’t need to exist anymore...