[RobAnderson]

I've been thinking about this for a while.

What has really changed in the music industry that so greatly effects the bottom line of those who service it - especially the remote recording and classical businesses (i.e. engineers, studios, etc.)?

I don't think piracy is entirely to blame: when I was a kid I didn't have enough money to go out and buy every cassette I wanted. Most of the recorded music I consumed was either recorded straight off the FM radio or bootleg tapes from my friends.

Declining quality of product? Maybe, but the labels were putting out plenty of crap back in the '60's and '70's as well. We only seem to remember the good stuff.

The fact that "most people don't really sit and listen to music anymore" doesn't hold water with me either - I don't think "most people" ever did. From my childhood I remember my mother (and my grandmother for that matter) putting on records and going about her day in the house, enjoying the music for sure, but it was not that she was sitting and listening always. There were sometimes where this was the case, but it was not the norm.

Were the numbers really sustainable to begin with? There was so much over-production, especially in classical recording, for so long and the budgets did not reflect the reality of the returns. I think this raised expectations beyond what was reasonable. Everyone involved was milking it, but I don't think anyone was really doing the math. I mean, how many copies of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" or Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto can one possibly own?

Corporatization? Maybe, but there were always a few "big" labels that had a great deal of control over what went on the market. Maybe the corporatization of radio played a bigger part, but maybe the declining interest in terrestrial "mainstream" radio plays a bigger part. You could blame that on corporate homogenization I suppose.

Technology? The fact that you no longer need a big reel-to-reel to multitrack a band does make a big difference to the remote business - a remote truck was a necessity just to transport and house the tape machines. Now a couple of JoeCo boxes or HD24's can be easily integrated with the FOH setup. Also the cost of such equipment has gone down considerably lowering the barrier to entrance - there are now more people competing for a smaller slice of the same big pie. But the advent of the portable camera for the consumer did not drive professional photographers out of existence? Why is it that music production facilities are so much harder hit?

Multi-media competition? Music does have a lot more to compete with nowadays - before the '80's cable TV and home movies didn't really exist, nor did video games. But surely, with this surge in content, shouldn't there be a need for more technicians and providers?

Also, there is a lot more subdivision of the market than there used to be in television and radio. Is there really such a thing as a mass market anymore?

In the classical world, I think budget labels like Naxos have really done a number on the traditional business model, but did they undermine the industry, or did they just come up with a better model? I am not sure that the classical productions were ever really profitable - I think they were mostly subsidized by the other profit-making enterprises in the major labels. Can you really blame a company for not wanting to pour money into the hole?

Maybe it is just a perfect storm of all these things?