Attention Economics and Music

There has been a lot of discussion for a long time now in regards to the value of recorded music. It certainly doesn't carry the same value it did ten years ago and no matter what the causes that have lead to this erosion in value it doesn't appear it will ever go back to what it once was. However, I agree with the point of view that this is only true in regards to the industrial economy but music still continues to have value within the the attention economy. Brad Burnham, a Partner at Union Square Ventures, explains "attention vs industrial" economics and that of "free" wonderfully in his blog here. The problem with attention economics is that it is not so easily monetized and defined. The most obvious way to monetize attention is advertising, followed by items for upsell and then the data, the information you have gathered on the people whose attention you were able to get. But how do you make money on attention if music becomes a niche play? I guess it is all a matter of where you fit on the food chain. If you're just the distributor you must aggregate the niches to make it as large as possible for a return but for an artist and their partners, you extract more from less fans. Eventually this will balance itself out but for now you have two incredibly big market forces, venture backed technology distributors and content rich artists that have for the past ten or so years trying to build the right models. I have been involved on both sides and I still find the most rewarding that of working with the artists and helping them figure out the answers to their puzzles rather than creating more for myself.