What Would the Music Industry Look Like if Napster Never Existed?
I call bullshit? Discuss!
xoxo, michaela
You call correctly, I think. What we see here is an industry bumping flatly along until the invention of the CD - said format change then producing a boom and a boost, peaking in 94 then plateauing again. Best case scenario is they’d have introduced a new format which might prompt another boost (but what? Not digital - sharing is a feature of digital media, not a Napster-shaped bug. Slashing prices might have done it, since we’re looking at unit sales here). Middle-case is that the plateau would have stretched on and the projected curve would have been flat. Worst-case is a decline, probably slower than what we actually got.
