The Music Biz

In one of the biggest music deals ever signed, the rap superstar Jay-Z has announced plans to leave his record company and strike a $150 million (£75 million) deal with a concert promoter.

The deal with the concert giant Live Nation reflects a seismic shift in the music industry in which stars now make far more money from playing live and selling merchandise than they do from selling their recordings.

As the article points out, Madonna and U2 have made less extensive deals with the same company already. It's alçso true that Robbie Williams in his last EMI contract made a similar sort of trade: EMI got for the first time some of the revenues from his shows.

But the basic point is really that the record company, qua record company, is really now over. There shouldn't be any surprise and the thought that a specific business structure, its success or not, is dependent upon the technology available at the time.

Blogging didn't make much sense in Caxton's time (even if the technology had indeed been there there would not have been enough literate people to advertise to as the financial prop) and whatever the copyright laws, selling something that can be digitised really isn't going to work very well now that we can all make digital copies so easily.

Thus the money in the music business is going to return to where it was a century ago pre-gramophone. It'll be, as it was, the performers and the songwriters making the money.

Perhaps that might make the basis of an interesting hack type business book: delineate the way in which the Victorian creative industries worked and predict that this is what will happen in the decades to come?