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the major labels tried desperately this decade to regain some control ie. profit. so they went around every business in britain demanding royalties for any music played there. ridiculous crap like that. they basically just throttled peoples ability to even listen to music in public even further. they try to sue people for d/ling.
as you say it is their own fault, because they refused to move with the times, they became so large in the 90's that they lost touch with reality. there are a few memoirs of the people who worked in american major labels back then. all those guys needed was to find one new band, let them go platinum and they were set for their careers. there are wild stories about execs in rental sports cars buying coke and prostitutes for potential rockstars, all the cliched crap you'd expect. there's even a light hearted one about an older exec, in his 40's who got hooked on crack and barricaded himself in his hotel room with beds agsint the door, a shotgun in his hand, and a massive stash of crack. those guys did not give a fuck about music, obviously.
those days are over now. thats great. whats sad is how many people are still stuck back then, unable to move into the new age fully, because they cant let go of their dated ideas about music as personal stash of property (cds) that signifies status, and band as archetype for some sort of christian esque hero worship. a lot of people are lost now, because there is so much music on offer and they are only concerned with "what I like, what I listen to to say something about MY identitiy". all that crap. they expect some sort of self they can access thru someone else to help them navigate the media reality and "belong". its identity politics. like your own manicured facism thru what band you worship. all this crap is dying now thanks to the internet. thank you oh computer nerds.
the people im complaining about are usually the ones still wishing it was the early 90's. i think its good that music has went thru this existential crisis, because what it means as a commodity and in the culture is changing, and unless you are prepared to move with it and seek out the new you are stuck chasing after a long gone past. im surprised by the amount of people who seem shocked when they ask you what the best decade for music was and you answer "now". but whatever, dinosaurs will die.
whats good about now is that there really is a measure of the equality and d.i.y. stuff the early punks went on about. when people post their music here they can get feedback, but most crucially it can be judged on the merit of the music, not the person. this is a lot better than the way things used to be. its not about who can hog the limelight or the practice room, who can afford the equipment, who is the "alpha male" of the party scene... all that stuff persists for some people but not online in the same way as it used to. but we still havent even began to harness the potential we have with the internet. thats up to us.
whatever labels did it was usually only about trying to extract profit from music, or in the rare cases it wasnt, it was limited by the profit factor. yeah, the industry to create this profit opened up new avenues, but whatever, its been done.
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