I'm going to get whipped for this, but I'll say it anyway: I don't see 
what is so terrible if large large record companies simply disappear. 
Music has been around much longer than the recording industry, so I do 
not think that the quality of music itself would suffer. And certainly 
there must be other business models for musicians to make a living 
without having to feed a huge machine that often sucked their blood, 
especially now that the means to record music are available to so many. 
Big Music generated lots of money for over a century, but only a very 
small proportion of all musicians saw that money. Perhaps Big Music is 
just not good for music anymore.

Marcos

Tom Fine wrote:
> So, even though I'm no fan of Big Music, they have a point in all of 
> this. If the owners of the copyright material -- descendants of those 
> who put up money to record the old stuff and current funders of new 
> material -- cannot get a return on their investment, they do not have 
> a business model. So in that case nothing can be made available 
> because it's a money-losing proposition and companies are not in 
> business to lose money.