From Andrew Sullivan's Blog (Richard Florida guesting with a post called Why Music Matters)
The way I see it,
that music is a "fruit-fly industry" - one that can tell us a lot about
the nature of technology, new business models, and the economy in
general. Music is a highly competitive business - a hyper-competitive
market in miniature, where competition for sonic, technological, and
talent advantage spurs rapid evolution and change. New recording and
network technology means that barriers to entry are lower than
ever. Music is often the first sector to experience the full force of
disruptive technology. It was the first industry to face the
file-sharing crisis, and other industries like film and publishing
are now learning from its experience. Musicians are quintessential
examples of free-agent workers, mixing income and seeking out
affordable, creative places to do their work. And the concentration of
musical talent and firms into clusters and scenes - in an industry
which requires little in the way of capital infrastructure and fixed
costs - can help us better understand geographic clustering across a
wide variety of fields.
From the point of view of someone who has worked in music all his life, 'sacrificial lamb industry' feels like a more accurate term to describe what the music business has become in the 21st century, but I understand entirely what Richard Florida is getting at. Music's unique ability to be portable, universal yet infinitely divisible has made it the perfect leading indicator for how we will all live and work togther.
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