
Why File Sharing Will Save Hollywood, Music - peter123
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/why-file-sharin.html
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stcredzero
Books have been a good model for music, as far as technological effects go.

Technological advances in publishing have acted to democratize the industry.
We have fewer ultra superstars like Hemmingway. (J.K. Rowling seems to be the
most recent one.) But publishing a book is something almost anyone can do on
their own now, albeit with considerable effort, so you don't necessarily need
to be an ultra-superstar to earn a living at it. You may have to devote
considerable effort promoting yourself, though, and you'll probably have to
tour.

You can replace "books" with "music" and most of the paragraph would apply
just as well, minus the sentences mentioning J.K. Rowling and Hemmingway.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, though. It used to be that all
entertainment culture was locally produced and consumed, in the form of
parlour music and after dinner stories. When media enabled this to be
centrally produced, this also enabled extreme concentrations of wealth.
However, it also took away people's power to produce their own culture. Now
technology is putting it back into the hands of the people.

So no, hopefully file sharing won't save Hollywood. Hopefully some significant
portion of it will remain as a gathering place for some of the best and
brightest talents, but Hollywood's former brilliance will be shattered and
redistributed to everyone out there.

