Good old greed. The speed CDs and the music industry is disappearing probably will solve this issue going forward. Music is getting more and more fragmented and smaller and smaller styles show up that are very specific to a particular location. This will help to dismantle the music industry lobby probably.
I hear this argument very often but I don't see any strong evidence that it is happening in the majority case, nor will happen. The music/entertainment industries have been relatively slow to react to digitisation, the internet and technological advances, but their lobbying prowess is frightening. Just look at their power and handywork at the national level instigating ridiculous and oppressive laws and at the international level at the trade agreements being instigated. Just like in the linked article.
I do agree that small scale/localised success - the long tail as it used to be referred to - is a positive force too. It looks like we all just have to learn to live with both camps (and many more besides) being given scope to thrive. Hopefully that's the best outcome, but this type of out of touch and obtuse legislation is not helping.
"In early 2015, Bandcamp released an announcement that artists using the website had officially gotten $100 million in total from music sale"
Total music industry is 15B (afaik). It is 1/150th of the entire music industry and that is just one site. I think the artist make more on Bandcamp and other music distribution platforms than on big labels, that might be the reason why Bandcamp is greatly successful.
You left out the source for that quote, but it appears to be from Wikipedia, which has this[1] as a source.
From that article I get the impression that the $100 million refers to all money paid during the existance of Bandcamp, while I suppose the 15B is annual? The article says that Bandcamp has revenue of $3.5 million a month (= $42 million a year), most of which goes to artists.
Well that's incredibly positive and I wasn't aware of that. I'm used to seeing more of the news that artists get almost no money through Spotify and similar channels or that consumer websites like Pandora getting legally harassed.
Bandcamp is very different though - you buy and own your music there. An album bought is worth much more to an artist than fractions of a cent per stream.
I'm not surprised that Bandcamp has been doing that well for a long time now. In contrast to all those streaming services it's a business model that seems to be sustainable.
I never liked Pandora, I was forcing myself to use it but they have limited music and their recommendation engine was a joke. It might work for hip-hop vs. heavy metal context but when it comes to sub-genres in electronic music not so much.
I agree primarily because the music industries target demographic appears to be 12 to 26... A group that usually heavily consumes what their peers listen to. Niche music appreciation mostly occurs later in life. My point is that fragmentation doesn't matter to the existing powers because the target of those groups doesn't fragment until they are much older and when they do they have a new set of fresh blood.
While I share much of your sentiment, I cannot share your optimism. Never underestimate the power of corporate rent-seeking lobbyism. Where I live, we do not only pay surcharges for blank CDs and DVDs, but printers, mobile phones, CD- and DVD burners, hard disk drives, etc. Practically, for any and all ways of storing data, both the drives and the media.
And it all vanishes in the huge, bottomless maw of corporate greed, with little ever reaching any actual artist. It largely divides into shareholder value, outrageous manager payoffs, and.... errr... "investments" (meaning, money for more lobbying and bribes).
