There are enough people on the small levels who are very good at the microeconomics of business that there’s not a lot of fat left for the exploitation. The jawdropping inefficiencies happen in the large companies, which is why the major labels are floundering now that the Internet has dropped the marginal cost of music to zero—as gatekeepers of distribution, they used to form an oligopoly, got really lardy, and they aren’t coping well with not being gatekeepers. There used to be six majors, there are now four and EMI’s looking pretty shaky.
There are enough people on the small levels who are very good at the microeconomics of business that there’s not a lot of fat left for the exploitation. The jawdropping inefficiencies happen in the large companies, which is why the major labels are floundering now that the Internet has dropped the marginal cost of music to zero—as gatekeepers of distribution, they used to form an oligopoly, got really lardy, and they aren’t coping well with not being gatekeepers. There used to be six majors, there are now four and EMI’s looking pretty shaky.