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Comment by tachyonbeam | Hacker News Reader

Before we had the technological ability to record music, musicians made their money by performing live. Then, when the radio came around, artists would perform live on the radio. I think that ultimately, this is what we may be going back to, at least in part. The record industry used to say that mp3 and downloading would be the end of music. What I think they don't realize is that music is as old as humanity.

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> music is as old as humanity.

but only recently has music been a huge money maker. It changes things when an art becomes a business with profit motives.

Are there any other examples of a medium making this transition?

Storytelling, and narratives.

Though, I suppose either music or storytelling may have been relatively more important, and larger percentage of the total activity of pre-historic human groups, than those 'industries' are for us today.

Theatre companies made their money by performing live too, and people would go to the rehearsals, copy the script, and rip them off by premiering the act before them. Hence the introduction of copyright law, which predates automatic recording by a couple centuries.

Ah, what? I don't know what you've been reading, but the Statute of Anne is commonly held to be the first "copyright" law, and it covers the monopoly rights of printing press operators. Copyright in the US today still does not cover performances, only fixed works.

That doesn't contradict the previous statement, if copyright is understood to apply to the script rather than the performance.

It contradicts that it was done to protect the authors of these plays. The motivation behind the Statute of Anne had nothing to due with playwrights.

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