Summary Remarks Consumers and Artists stand to gain the most from the Internet. This is consistent with the idea of disintermediation where the middlemen are bypassed.
Agents are likely to benefit slightly as they can make more informed decisions.
They will continue to be important in the value chain since they bring marketing expertise to the artists. The losers will be the companies that physically package the bits, since the Internet allows the cheap distribution of bits separate from a physical product, and the retailers. The case studies that follow demonstrate some of these ideas in practice. However, since this is still in its infancy, it will be a few years before these predictions play themselves out.