No Warning

You know, as Michael Franti and Spearhead said “revolution never come with a warning”. Indeed, if history has told us nothing else, it’s that revolution is like living on an island volcano. That’s right - a volcano. On this island you build your dream house thinking the rest of your life will be spent living in a tropical paradise, all the while and unbeknownst to you tremendous forces are at work in churning magma beneath your feet. One day, without warning there is an explosion of lava that spews from the Earth, coating the inhabitants, resurfacing, and changing the landscape of the island forever. Most of the time people don’t even realize a revolution is afoot, and certainly do not possess the forewarning in time to actively participate in the revolution, until it explodes in their face. That is of course, unless they are listening closely to and understanding the rumblings beneath their feet.

There are rumblings in the bowels of the music industry. If we want to participate, we should understand what they mean.

Surely Sir Berners-Lee did not fully comprehend the magnitude to which the data-sharing technologies made possible by the World Wide Web would ultimately and holistically impact the music industry, but there is no question that they have. Some liken this change to be as dramatic as the advent of the cassette tape, broadcast radio, and even the first recorded audio track of “Mary had a little lamb” by Thomas Edison on his wax cylinder “record”. The truth is, unless you are clairvoyant, no one knows how this change is going to pan out. However, one could assess the current status of the industry, how we arrived here, and reasonably deduce a probable future.