While surfing the news yesterday I happened across an editorial (can't remember where, unfortunately) that examined the music publishing industry's current malaise. The music industry, opined the editorial, would need to shift from marketing media (aka CDs) to marketing artists, and the future would see a larger percentage of the industry's revenues coming from live performances than is true today. As evidence of this trend, the editorial referenced Madonna's shift from Warner Music to Live Nation.

It occurs to me that this same shift is likely to occur for arts and publishing industries across the board. Whereas in the past, an artist could create a product, market the product then live off the residuals, in the future art could likely be much more personalized. This trend applied to computer book publishing would explain the decline in mass-produced tomes in favor of smaller, more personalized blog articles. Probably the same will be true for a lot of mass produced products. Why shouldn't you be able to apply the same degree of personalization to buying a car that you do to buying a house or a computer? And why shouldn't a similar smörgåsbord of options be available when you purchase a refrigerator or a pair of shoes? If I were an American manufacturer this would be a fundamental aspect of my strategy to fend of cheap Chinese imports.

In other news, I've started setting up a Office Communications Server Speech Server. It looks to be quite complicated.