OT: Star System Was: RE: Another interesting article

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

> Sounds to me like an extension of the same complaint that 
> resulted from 
> the advent of radio and recording technologies.  "Recordings 
> have made 
> music a commodity and lowers the public's appreciation of live music."
> 

Hey Bill - while I do certainly appreciate the many, many joys of recording
and overdubbing and firmly believe that it's an overall positive, that
doesn't mean that it had no negative effects. From a pseudo-sociological
point of view, my (unresearched and uninformed but intuitive) belief is 
that
recordings took a locally-based folk/troubadour system of music that had
predominated throughout history and transformed it into the star system we
have today. That's not entirely a positive thing, although it has positive
aspects. I think that just now, perhaps, we're on the verge of a
decentralization revolution caused by the radically decreasing price of
recording technology, combined with the slow-motion crumbling of the majors
caused by file sharing. Things could get interesting.

Warren