Sounds fairly on target to me, and yeah, of course I would be perfectly fine with this result.

Lately I've been developing an idea that artists should only release one album. They do it in their early 20s or so, put down all their great song ideas that they've been developing for their whole lives, record it with a passion that only comes from people of that age. They finance it themselves, because it's that important to them, and at that point in their lives, they don't have a lot of other obligations to spend their money on. They release it free for anyone who wants it.

And then they're done.

There is no need to go on to make any more albums, because a lot of the time they'll just be a boring rehash of the first one, and because there are already way too many albums out there (1200+ metal-related albums in 2007!) More importantly, most won't even have the ability to make more albums, because no one will pay them for their first one, and by then, they'll have to become "responsible adults" and not throw their money away anymore.

The only problem I had with this idea is that such ephemeral bands would kind of destroy the concept of live concerts. But...

Live music will change as well. It will actually go back in time a few hundred years. Certain quality composers will be paid decent money to create music which will be performed in a live setting. It will be performed by musicians who have studied their craft and become excellent at it.

...you might have solved that part for me here. It wouldn't be quite the same as the classic live band performances we see today, but it wouldn't be all bad (people seem to enjoy going to the symphony well enough).

Neil