AP Code Suggestion

[apollolux]

The thing is that the music industry IS hurting from piracy. However, its not artists like Beyonce, Taylor-Swift, Drake, J Cole or Kendrick Lamar hurting. It's the artists at the bottom particularly in rap. There were always ways to obtain a bootleg Jay-Z album in the 90's but people still bought his stuff which supports your original point. The thing is that artists without that huge mass appeal and loyal fan base (again the one's just starting out or trying to work their way up) will and do suffer. Then again my argument to some of those artists would be make better music and more complete albums rather than one or two catchy tracks that I can (and probably will) simply download using illegal means. I still buy CDs but only from a select few artists.

Artists, no matter how "popular," have always been taken advantage of by their labels. They're treated as expendable and "there's always someone willing" to do what it takes to replace them, so labels are never hurting for "talent." The rest is marketing; for example, there is no doubt that Mariah Carey is objectively more talented and a better singer than Ariana Grande because she actually did the work and is way more consistent in her delivery, but Ari was basically raised (bred?) for performance (originally a Broadway singer and Nickelodeon child star, but think Disney) and is consistently advertised as "the next Mariah Carey" just because she can hit similarly high notes and post-processing cleans up her mistakes.

The music industry is not hurting, never was. They're still late to the party but slowly and finally beginning to modernize their business models to account for digital distribution; Amazon, iTunes, and for "indies" Bandcamp will remain the leaders of this for quite some time. Artists will only see success when they stop letting themselves be taken advantage of by their labels, and/or they do what Jay-Z did and start their own label and get on the vertical integration train.