Since the finished goods were scarce and the means to produce them were capital-intensive, music became an industry. As we said in the Cluetrain book, industry understood and described its work in shipping terms. Our job was to create or add value along the way. We may live in an Information Age, but we continue to rely on industrial concepts. This is why we continue to understand business in shipping terms, even when value chains get shortened to a click or a handshake.
Conceptual metaphors are extremly deep and meaningful matters.
They may not do our thinking for us, but they do provide the terms we use to do that thinking. Thinking about markets as battlefields, for example, is very different than thinking about markets as animals, as environments or as conversations. I think there is middle ground here. I think there is truth to that. Speaking of metaphors, the primary one for time is money.