I knew there was something I forgot to blather about last night! When we were driving home Friday night, Market Place mentioned this but I got distracted by many other things over the weekend.
It’s 10 years later and much has changed, especially in Austin. Tower Records on 24th and Guadalupe closed (no one shed a tear), several other stores shuttered too (Jupiter, Cheapo, ABCD, Neptune off the top of my head), the big box retailers have scaled back if they remain and the survivors are selling vinyl. New competitors jumped in when Apple proved the waters were safe to try: Wal-Mart, Amazon.
The iTunes Store definitely did fill a void on provided content. A decade ago, people still owned a couple hundred CDs (on average) to put into their iPods. Then people started buying fewer along with the newer, younger participants joining the fray. Thus, Apple has stopped/slowed the bleeding the music industry was suffering from, much of it was self-inflicted.
However, Metallica and the industry’s fears have proven to be untrue in the long run. Diehard music fans such as myself still buy entire albums (about half of the sales are); still go to the record store because we read the liner notes and/or like the tactile part; and the rebound can be attributed to regaining casual fans. These were the customers that were leaving in droves.
I hope in time, copyright law finally gets the long overdue overhaul it needs and/or variety (aka, out-of-print material) work its way into the system. One victory at a time though, remember the ongoing debate involving DRM.