Technology, the recording industry, and business sense

The KLF wrote The Manual (see also here and here) in 1988, but they certainly seem to have been prescient:

From now on, whether or not the technology makes the traditional musician's craft redundant, the young creative type will become more aware that he is able to control more areas of the way his music is communicated to the masses. The manipulation of this control will become a very important creative form of expression in itself.

Of course there is a place for the major record company in the future as there is still a place for brass bands, large national orchestras and Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. The precise function the major record companies will play in the music business as we turn the corner into the 21 st century is something we are not going to bother guessing at. One thing they and we suppose all major international companies are good at is moving the goal posts; probably because they owned them in the first place.

As more and more creators of music begin to realise that it is possible to make records themselves and steer those records in whatever direction they want, at the same time as retaining all the copyright in the product thus a bigger chunk of the action, the attractiveness of signing your soul and its products away from now to eternity (well at least fifty years after the day you die) will become to look rather silly. Nothing to do with ideology, just straight forward business sense.