Well, the first domino to fall was Napster, and the concept that ‘sharing’ the music you bought with 100M ‘friends’ rather than laboriously cobbling mix tapes together one at a time to hand out to just the ONE friend, was legitimate rather than plain theft.

Pop music was always a very expensive art form at the level that pre-Napster musicians and labels practiced it at. Remove a good 80%+ of the profit margin, obviously major cuts had to be made in the production costs, and that was the margin that the great studio players, engineers and studio owners lived on.

The 60’s through the 80’s represent a zenith that it seems unlikely will ever be reached again until attitudes about that music should be free change radically. And in today’s post-industrial service economy that doesn’t honestly seem likely… 🎹🤔😢
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An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!