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John Backus @backus
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Music industry wasn't just anti-tech

By 2000, they were addicted to inflated revenue: album bundling and illegal price fixing meant you payed $15 for a $10 album to get a $1 song.

Even if $1 songs replaced piracy, revenue would fall by ~90%. More for fixed price streaming.
Recording industry couldn't adapt to the internet because >90% of their revenue was artificially inflated.

$15 albums online won't kill Napster. iTunes/Spotify may, but that is almost as bad.

Lesson: Bezos-style thin margins mean your rev model can't be used against you
Regarding the music industry fixing prices:

> Between 1995 and 2000 music companies ... artificially inflated prices of compact discs. ... It is estimated customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million and up to $5 per album

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_price_…
If you think the music industry was disrupted b/c didn't understand tech, you're wrong. They had 2 choices:

• Try to kill small companies that facilitated unprecedented amounts of theft. Surely they won't get away with it, right?
• Embrace tech; best case lose 80% of revenue
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