In the 1980s, the hit lament was, "Video Killed The Radio Star." Now, a rock legend who was a computer worker before he was discovered hammering out his early songs on the sidewalk says broadband could kill music retailing—and the retailers have only themselves to blame.
"As soon as broadband is big enough, (record retailing) is over," said Elvis Costello, after the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, to the Hollywood Reporter. "They will have to change or die ... It's going to be about five minutes to the end. All bets are off."
Costello explicitly said music chains like Tower Records had "let the spirit go out" of record selling.
The British singer-composer's comments were just some of the discussion that went on during panel discussions at the South By Southwest festival concerning the rise of peer-to-peer online file swapping and online song selling and the actual or alleged drop in record selling.
"In some cases," Michael Grebb wrote in Wired.com, "talk focused on opportunities. But in many other instances, panelists warned about the perils and uncertainty that face both the artistic and the business sides of the industry—especially when it comes to (P2P)."
Washington music attorney Jay Rosenthal said P2P stops new artists from coming forward and "kill(s) mid-level artists across the board." But Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Wendy Seltzer said the music industry's litigation attack against online music swappers "will continue to have little effect on P2P traffic."
