In the January issue of Wired David Byrne reviews the current economics of the music industry. The classic model of a recording company handling production (the recording studio), promotion (touring), and distribution (CDs) is being displaced at each step. Recording studios are now laptops, promotion is now a MySpace page, and distribution is now a MySpace page or iTunes. Twenty years ago, artists dreamed of a “major label deal,” now they look at online distribution models and self-production. It’s partly about the democratization of information and partly about narrowcasting — appealing to niches.

Like newspapers and other media, it’s an industry in transition.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=1