The music industry today reminds me a lot of what it looked like in the fifties in that a lot of music is bought by the song. We have simply traded 45's for itunes. The album's heyday was 1968-2000, not a bad run for any product. Prior to the sixties lot's of music was bought in singles form, ie; the little old 45. Cassettes, eight tracks and CD's killed the 45 and people were forced to buy albums. I still remember having to buy the entire cassette to get one song, it used to tick me off.
While essentially true, when the 78 was replaced by 33 1/3rd LPs and 45s, (HiFi) there was a battle just like Beta vs VHS going on. Debates about the musical quality, values and all kinds of other things. Stereo didn't come until the 60s, before that LPs and 45s were mono, and there were 10" 33's before the larger format became the standard.
I bought albums, copied them to reel to reel tape, and listened to the tapes. When cassettes came out, I could mix my own collections. I recorded off the radio and saved songs for my own tapes. (hey, sound familiar?) The only thing that's changed is that with digital you don't have the quality loss and expensive technology to copy and duplicate music. The original digital recording is identical in all respects to the copy. Free music was a matter of recording off the airwaves and editing. Not as available to all the people as the internet, but anyone who wanted could have done the same things I did in the 60s.
Yes, you could buy a 45 of your favorite song or a whole album of the same music. Sometimes the 45s were different from the LPs and the LPS had full versions while the 45 was limited in time and had a shorter cut. Since I never bought 45s, except maybe Monster Mash or something that wasn't out on an album initially. (Leader of the Laundromat) A 45 was only one song, then you had to change the record. Nice for someone who was active in playing witht hings, instead of sitting and listening to music, on the couch?
But that wasn't the point of the complaint or what's going on here. We have global marketing, without the need for the payola, bribes, promoters, managers, big distribution corporations, multi-year exclusive contracts, record companies with a strangle hold on everything. Now people can publish and distribute their own music, independent of the big corporations. The same thing happened with photography. Many other products and services have been transformed by global marketing and the internet.
If John wants to sit home and complain about the Internet and the new distribution, best of luck. Instead he should be finding a way to embrace the technology and use it to his advantage.
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