The previous post ended with a very valid question about the possible end of Media Ownership: Is it a good thing or a bad thing? For that I have no answers, only guesses and weighted assumptions.

As my friend said in the previous post, the end of corporate control over the music world can (mostly) have only good consequences for the customer: better choices, greater control and less filling. However you have to wonder if it would also see the end of the professional artist.

Now, before we go any further lets not confuse ‘professional artist’ and ‘good artist’. That’s not what I mean all. I use ‘professional’ here as in ‘the main/only occupation of the person’. An artist certainly does not need to be in the music business full time to create something great, nor is a 24/7 artist assured of fame and money.

What I mean is, in a (near) future where there would be (pretty much) no revenue for creating music, could one afford to do it full time?

Of course, many artists (and even more would-be artists) would/are more than happy with just the fame coming from their creations and most would still be happy working full time in an unrelated job to provide their livelihood.

Would this work on the long run? Would we loose a lot of creativity due to the artists spending most of their (waking) hours on non-musical related activities? Or would this simply provide some kind of culling of what we consider today ‘filling’ and results in only the best of the best being released in the wild? The question is on the table and I have no answer for it.

Now don’t kid yourself, you’re saying ‘we would still be paying for music somehow’. Let’s be honest: no, you won’t. Copying a file is just too easy and convenient. Osama was wondering if this is also the future of the gaming industry. I don’t believe so; for the average Joe, copying a music file can be considered ‘easy’ but punching through today’s software copy protection is not. Most of us who ‘hang around’ blogs and the like will laugh at my last statement. Of course for ‘computer literates’ it’s mostly a piece of cake, but not for the other 95% of the populace. But I digress…

And don’t you start with the micro-payment crap. Except of a few minor exceptions it had been shown as a failure. Remember; the same average ‘computer illiterate’ Joes who find it hard to copy software will be baffled trying to set up a Paypal account and way too afraid of ‘hackers’ to trust paying real money on the internet to independent musicians. McCloud is wrong, deal with it and move on.

As Osama pointed out, today’s digital tools are making creation (not just music, but movies, writing, drawings and most of the other non-physical artistic venues) a lot easier and we, the end-users will keep on living on an ever expanding wave of creativity (as long as the internet remains a bastion of free speech). I don’t think we can even imagine today how much this will affect the world cultures, nor what it will represent for the artists themselves. The end-users (us) will enter a new global cultural golden age never seen before in history. Such a golden age that, once it gets the necessary momentum, will never be stopped and will follow us into the stars and eternity.