>listening to new music online or on some physical medium such a CD/DVD/MP3 >player will not cost you a thing. No matter how you try to proect it, people >will break your protection and listen to it.

This of course assumes that musicians will want to create music and give it away.

>People who want to make music, and aren't afraid to not make a dime on it, >due to the near commoditization of creating music, will have ways of getting >their art out there

This is already in place. Anyone can make music and put it on My Space or whatever, fine.

But do you really think that professional musicians will want to go through the huge effort and expense of creating "product" only to give it away. Are you even remotely aware of how much work goes into producing one song, let alone an entire album?

It is work. Would you do your job for nothing and hope that someone appreciates it enough to throw you a bone?

>Live music will change as well. It will actually go back in time a few hundred years

yipee. then we can all be reminded of why we have the phrase "starving artists".

What makes you think there will be any live music any more? Touring is designed to promote the sale of music. If there is no music company to make profits on the music, then there is no music company to back the tour. Unless, of course, you're counting on these mysterious music benefactors to finance that too. Which is, of course, fucking hilarious, as you're talking about a community that wants the music for free. How big of a rush do you think there will be to throw money behind an artist who doesn't get paid so they can go out to play for an audience that is probably going to be expecting to get to watch the live show for free since they got the music for free. Perhaps your wonderful future will be shitty webcam broadcasts live from some guy's basement. Thrilling.

Have the giants of the music biz failed miserably? Without a doubt. Seriously, they showed up to the internet distribution party late, and then have the fucking nerve to charge the same thing to download files as they do for the physical product. It's insulting. How about subtracting the physical production costs? How about subtracting out the cut the distributor gets, and the piece the retail store would get? No, the greedhead bastards figured we wouldn't notice. Am I off base in thinking that if someone could download high quality MP3s and artwork for a fair price, fair being a price adjusted to remove the costs that are not there, that perhaps some folks might opt to get legal downloads?

Might have worked if they had started 10 years ago. It's too late now. The concept that thievery is ok if it's music has been established.