Question #11

Hello all! Today is Thursday and we have only 1 day until TGIF! I know a lot of you were happy at that thought! So here we go with today’s question.  When my generation was growing up, we listened to mostly records and cassette tapes. Originally we would get that favorite album out put it on the record turntable set the needle, sometimes placing a quarter on the needle so it wouldn’t skip and listen to good music.   Then came the advent of the cassette tape. Man, we’d get some blank tapes and sometimes tape the radio because we wanted to hear our favorite songs over and over again or a certain mix from DJ Red Alert or DJ Kid Capri especially if we didn’t have our own copies of the songs. Exclusives were really exclusive back then also because we couldn’t go and download them back then. As a matter of fact the internet was almost never heard of during those times. There even was a trend amongst people in the hood who used to put tissue or tape over the top corners of a cassette to dub over a tape that they no longer wanted to listen to or just simply didn’t like. LOL We sure can be creative! LOL As in the words of the late great Notorious B.I.G. “we let our tapes rock until our tapes popped!”. Then came the internet takeover, we no longer had to wait for songs to come out because with a certain file sharing program we could simply download the song if we had the right search string and even more so with the invention of the MP3 player, such as the Ipod, Zune and many others, we no longer had to have a physical copy of the song.  This has led to lower record sales and tightened the profit margin of many record companies, publishing companies and royalty management companies . This trend has affected artists both new and old. So my question for you today is do you think with the state of technology and its potential for advancement, that we will eventually wipe out the need for record companies because of insatiable appetite for new music?  As always comments are deeply appreciated.