It may not be as romantic to believe, but there are plenty of young musicians (and artists, and athletes, and actors, and…) dreaming of fame and fortune. There’s a reason American Idol is the biggest show on television. And that reward is, for them, a way to justify the extreme lengths to which they’ll go before they give up and get a nine-to-five job. Without reward, they’ll burn out faster and understandably so. One need only look at the difference between the Western system for IP and the old Soviet system to see the results. Yes, the U.S. system is currently badly broken, due mostly to abuses of power, but the core reasoning was sound.

That said, I’ve also argued that the future of music is “free”. Same is true for all media, but even for many tangible products when the digital files themselves are swapped and fed into home-based fabbing systems.

“Exludability in the age of the web? Nah…”

Actually, yes. It’s already happening (surprised it took this long, tbh). For media products, the future is in Experiences. Concerts are “real” experiences. Meeting authors at book signings are Experiences. Check the price of attending live venues over the last 30 years. Research shows a phenomenal inflation in pricing to the point where, as it once was, seeing something Live will be a privilege afforded the wealthy.

For tangible product, it’s the materials that are used by fabbing machines themselves that will have worth. It’s a printer ink world that’s coming… at least until technologies allow us to efficiently recycle using things like bacteria or build objects using nanofactories.

So it would be presumptuous to assume that “they”, the musicians, are all in agreement with how the industry is today and what “they’re” willing to do for their music.