Since the rise of Napster.com in 1999 a common refrain heard throughout the digital world is that new technologies – driven by P2P and the internet – will fundamentally challenge the current power relations within the music industry. The majors, currently the Big Four, will lose their stranglehold on channels of distribution. Artists and musicians will be able to easily and cheaply produce their music and put it on the internet, making it available all over the world. In short, we will see the democratization of music.

Yet I see a need for a healthy dose of skepticism and caution here. While we should acknowledge change and that new digital technologies will have transformative effect, there’s no reason to assume these will be fundamental.

John McGlasson at Guitar Jam Daily points to some of the limits to this new distribution model in his Industry Insider column:

Over the last couple years it’s become short work to achieve digital distribution for your music, arguably any artist can get their stuff up on iTunes, among countless other digital outlets, but we have to assume the day is going to come when all these titles from independent artists that very rarely, if ever, get downloaded, are going to be purged from digital download providers’ servers based on pure economics; a title that generates no revenue doesn’t justify the disc space to store it. Digital stores begin to resemble brick-and-mortar retail operations when floor space becomes a premium.

Sure we can all get our music on iTunes and other channels of digital distribution. But what’s to ensure it will remain there much less be downloaded? There will continue to be gatekeepers in the digital realm. McGlasson challenges the potential of the CD Baby model to truly threaten the top-down ways of the music industry due to contradictions between seeking to democratize the system and the need to stand out:

…if they want to have a good catalog that’s taken seriously when it comes time to divide up that valuable online shelf space in the future, CD Baby is going to have to do what all labels do, pick their best, strongest artists and purge the rest. I don’t see how they can continue to be an outlet for literally anyone who wants to put their stuff up on CD Baby for sale, because the digital outlets will begin to see them as the source for non-performing, bandwidth-robbing titles, that don’t generate enough revenue to justify the disc space to store them.

The result of all this is that labels will continue as gatekeepers (something McGlasson see as a good thing), “It appears that, as in the ‘old’ music world, the dividing line between good music and bad will largely be signed or unsigned. Independent artists won’t be able to get distribution without the reputation, promotional abilities, and strength of consolidation that a great label provides.”