What value does the music industry add to artist's work...?

[thelordofhell]

4. They used to have the best model for distribution and advertising

Now they are being destroyed by the internet model. Downloading (legal, and unfortunately, illegal) has killed the brick and mortar entertainment business. But quite frankly, the industry wanted to phase out the record store anyway. Back in the 70's and 80's it was quite normal to have an industry rep come around to your store to chat about and give out posters and flats for their artists. In the late 80's early 90's they phased out that function completely because they were squirreling away their cash because CD sales were declining (people didn't have to replace their record/tape collection anymore) and the internet was starting to eat into their business model. By the 00's the industry was full bore into suing their customers and casual users to try to get the pirates that were mostly the college age kids who were using the University net to download everything. Now we're in the 10's and the large spectrum that was only available to businesses and Universities are now in the living room, and the industry is wanting to censure the net because they can't stop P2P networks from popping up like candy.