The Free Refills Story, Part 15

That whole supply and demand piece had another wrinkle. Digital recording gear was no less subject to Moore's Law than any other computer equipment. By 1994, it was obvious that, soon enough, average musicians would be able to afford to buy gear of sufficient quality that they could record and release albums outside of the usual industry channels, and there was nothing the gatekeepers in the industry could do to stop them. The supply, in the sense of variety, of recorded music was about to go way, way up. Demand, of course, would stay roughly the same.

Supply and demand gets taught on the first day of Economics 101. We go so far as to call it a law. It is the bedrock principle on which we base our whole understanding of economics.

More than 20 years after I wrote that paper, the music industry is still trying to pretend that supply and demand doesn't exist.

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