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Well, it's easy to write books and articles about how the music industry or the movie industry is so stupid and was so late to adapt but it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how business operates. I'm not saying you Snake, but the bloggers and tech people who write these books you mentioned.
First of all, the music industry did make some mistakes early on but to blame them for not changing to a digital delivery system overnight is just not fair. People don't realize that there were multiple contracts in place ALREADY that had no provisions for digital distribution. Contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars involving hundreds of people per contract. One album from one artist has provisions for the songwriters, co-songwriters, performers, producers, engineers, other artists from other labels that appeared on the album, etc. You can't just start selling stuff in a totally different medium with no provisions when there are huge and complex contracts like that already in place.
Same with television. Everyone wonders why TV shows took so long to appear on the web. Once again, contracts. Sydication deals are in place where stations and companies pay for the right to air television shows based on the fact that they alone are able to air those television shows. Once they start being shown on the web those syndication deals are now worth much less as people have more than one place to watch those shows. This is just one example.
All I'm saying is, everyone blames these companies but they don't realize how excruciatingly difficult it is to change overnight with these iron clad deals that have been in place for 50 years.
Not to mention the music single went away because of natural market forces and there were other legal download music services way before iTunes.
But I do agree with you that there is much to learn from the growing pains of these other industries you mentioned.
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