And every time it changed, it reflected a deep change in the social and economic organization of the time.

Monks sang Gregorian Chant in their monasteries.

The Germans began to organize orchestral music that involved a conductor. The musicians all played at the same time. That was a big step if my music history classes many years ago were correct.

We moved on to a situation in which musicians were sponsored by the nobility or continued to work for the churches.

Then around the time of Mozart and especially in the Beethoven era, musicians moved out of the castles and became independent. We entered the age of capitalism.

Technology is changing our social structure. The music business is necessarily changing to accommodate the new structure. Who knows where it will go?

The music industry is just reflecting the changes that are occurring generally in society with regard to the employer-employee relationship. It's changing, but who knows what the next step will be.

Funny. My husband and I watched a good movie on Netflix called King of Devil's Island. My husband admired the fact that it seemed that everyone involved in the film from the main actors to the direction (great) to the extras seemed to want to work together to make a really good film.

Maybe group efforts will be the employment, the work organization of the future.

We moved from the feudal era to an era of entrepreneurship. We seem to have moved from entrepreneurship -- independent entrepreneurship into capitalism. Our economy is now dominated by corporatism with a some (maybe more than we realize) small business entrepreneurship surviving from an earlier era. But the insecurity in the workplace that all workers, not just musicians, are having to deal with is challenging. Who knows what is next?

Musicians have to adjust to the new economic realities like everyone else. But they have gone through it before. Music always survives.

recommend, if you liked that one, both 'Mirush' and 'Cross My Heart, Hope to Die' from the same director, Marius Holst. Also good films.

Great article. I still buy music, mostly vinyl LPs and SACDs/DVDAs.

But I am not convinced that it is "Wall Street" that is responsible for those days being over. My understanding is that most artists never made significant money from CD sales, and that most of their income did, and does, come from live performances.

Artists are realizing that they can make more money than they ever could by bypassing the traditional distribution methods and releasing the music directly to the fans themselves. The record labels know this and they're actively fighting back against the new methods. That is what is ruining music kn its current state.