Interesting article on Quartz.com tracking how “the internet’s power to unbundle content sparked a rapid transformation of the music industry’ and arguing that”and it’s doing the same thing to higher education today.
Let’s start with the recorded music industry.
It’s no surprise that
The unbundling of albums in favor of individual songs was one of the biggest causes of the music industry’s decline.
It cannibalized the revenue of record labels as 99-cent songs gained popularity over $20 albums.
What did surprise me us that recording industry revenues have dropped by half from the $14 billion in 2000.
The eroding revenues and and internet dynamics have “changed the way music labels had to operate in order to maintain profitability.
The traditional services of labels: identifying artists; investing in them; recording, publishing, and distributing their work; and marketing them—are now increasingly offered a la carte.”
And, talk about the top 1% and distribution of riches …
Being a recording artist these days is a hard gig …
Pressure from labels then had downstream effects on content creators, specifically artists.
The top one 1% of artists now take home 77% of revenue, and the rest is spread across an increasing number of artists.
The pain of the record labels is forced on artists through smaller royalty payments.
Ouch.
Now, what’s the parallel to higher education?
The Homa Files 