i’ve been debating about posting this from John Perry Barlow, grateful dead lyricist and co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation. i made a pact that stipulated there was to be no posts regarding napster or copyrights for a >whole< week. but i can't help myself. the following prediction ruined my resolve:
“…many musicians have discovered, as the Grateful Dead did, that the best way to make money from music is to give it away. While scarcity may increase the value of physical goods, such as CD’s, the opposite applies to information. In a dematerialized information economy, there is an equally strong relationship between familiarity and value. If your work is good, allowing what you’ve done to self-replicate freely increases demand for what you haven’t done yet, whether by live performances or by charging online for the download of new work.
For these, and far more reasons than I can state here, I’m convinced that the traditional music business is finished. Napster and other environments like it will polish off the likes of BMG and Tower Records within five years.”