[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Not so fast, Dennis. I think that it was Napster that changed the music industry, not Apple. For that reason I think that books and music can be directly compared.

You have a point, and I had indeed forgotten Napster, but Apple's effect isn't the same as Napster's.

When I was growing up, pop music was all about the single. Kids bought 7" 45 RPM records, with an A side and a B side, and Top 40 radio stations played the top 40 songs of the moment. Albums were what parents or relatives bought you as a present, and consisted of the (hopefully) hit single songs plus filler of varying quality. Many of the pop artists didn't write their own songs, but recorded stuff written by others. Some of those writers went on to fame, like Carole King, who began as half of the Goffin-King songwriting team writing pop songs to be recorded by others. And the artists made their main living performing.

In the mid-60s, the Beatles were the spearhead of a fundamental change. They wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. While the single was still important, albums became increasingly dominant. Bands were expected to write their own material, and albums got rated in part by how well the individual songs maintained the overall quality level. Some bands recorded "concept" albums, where all the songs revolved around a common there or were part of an over arching story.

The album became the "product", and a tour was something a band did to promote the album. The goal was to become popular enough that you made your main living from album sales, and went on the road only when there was a new album to promote.

Apple changed that model because you didn't have to buy the whole album. You could cherry pick and get just the songs you wanted, import them into iTunes and create custom playlists.

In some respects, it put music back the way it used to be. Individual songs became important, not albums. And the album was no longer the "product". While it was still important, you didn't tour just to promote the album. You toured because more and more, you made your actual living playing live gigs. The album became a souvenir of the show, and not the reason the show was put on in the first place.

This is what I'm talking about when I say music and books aren't directly comparable. Unless the book is a collection of short stories, you aren't going to see people cherry picking bits and pieces. They'll get the whole book or not at all. And authors can't exactly go out and perform live as their principal income. Their money comes from book sales.
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Dennis