Tom M. Padwa Baltimore Joab Jackson's polemic for Napster ignored some rather sticky truths about the nature of production and revenue in the entertainment industry. A little more than 10 years ago, the industry was going apoplectic over CDs, which are now the standard format, effectively consigning vinyl LPs to antiquity. That it has been caught again with its marketing pants down with regard to the Internet is just simply the historical pattern. It goes back to the time wax cylinders were derided as making live musicians obsolete. Someone always finds a way to make new technology profitable, and this will be no exception.
Problem is, musicians themselves are now in an even more vulnerable spot than they have been.
Perhaps unwisely, many stake their lives, reputations, and savings on making music. It is not a hobby, an avocation, or a second job. The romance of the starving artist whose austerity drives his or her desire to create is a destructive myth. Those who profit from their work have nothing to do with its production in many cases. Unlike the artists, the industry has the money and the top-40 cash cows to wait out whatever assaults it.