Unwillingness to change, I think, is a important part of the explanation. The old music companies were unable to provide the service their customers now asked f

Unwillingness to change, I think, is a important part of the explanation. The old music companies were unable to provide the service their customers now asked for, i.e. convenient online, streaming, etc. In order to do so they would need to fundamentally change every aspect of their industry, from production, to artist contracts, to marketing, to financing, to distribution, and sales. Now if you were an executive on any level on such a corporation, would you want to continue doing the minimum effort thing of keeping everything the same? Or would you recommend completely changing everything, including replacing you with someone with different skills. Itunes did not hire the same distribution of people as the old record companies had, not even close. They could not fight it forever, and the change is still in progress, with more artists than ever using alternate crowdsourcing, etc.