David Byrne: Survival Strategies for the Music Industry

When I was a little kid, my parents would let me rummage through their record collection stacked near the family turntable. After deciding on my favorite album cover, my mom or dad would drop the needle on my chosen record. As the music played, I would peer into the tiny holes of my parents' stereo speakers and marvel at the fact that people could live inside such a small space. I ultimately decided that singers and musicians must be really special people with magic powers. This was especially true for The Beatles.

Nearly 30 years have passed since my earliest memories of music, and now music seems doomed to extinction, thanks to the ease with which music can be pirated on the Internet; the shallowness of consumers willing to waste money on the latest Britney Spears album; and the short-sighted greed of large record companies. As a result, radio station DJs have been replaced by corporate robots, MTV has been replaced by "reality" programming, and consumers have chosen Jessica Simpson and Nickleback as the voices of their generation.

As David Byrne (former lead singer for the Talking Heads) recently pointed out in an article published by Wired, music used to be much more than a thin compact disc packaged in a plastic jewel case. It was a social experience. It was the experience of hearing a song for the first time outside your bedroom window, gathering for a dance with a small group of friends, or going to a concert with thousands of other people. Fortunately, great music might be more accessible than ever before. In the article, Byrne discusses several reasons why truly great musicians might finally have the means to sustain themselves without having to sell their souls.