The music industry is an entertaining place. As honorary buffoons of the traveling trade show circuit, we were allowed to poke fun at their musty business models (”still trying to protect our flailing horse carriage factories since 1875″). Paint their potential saviours in gruesome colors (”some mobile network providers have higher earnings than the revenues of all you guys combined”). Or tried to scare the #%@! out of them by explaining some tech basics (”in 2010, a top of the line hard disk will be able to contain every piece of music which has ever been recorded - preferably preinstalled”).
It has been fun. But now it’s gone. The industry execs took over. They slaughter their holy cow DRM (well, almost). Make fun of their business models. Come on, it’s just not fair.
But why does this make Steve the better Bill? Read this: Apple - Thoughts on Music. And the we can talk about it a bit more.
PS The music industry is really an entertaining place. But people working in the industry tend to suffer from a very specific occupational hazard. They become a little bit hard of hearing.