Some artists will have larger ambitions, and we need artists like this. We need the Green Days of the world, the U2s, even the Hawthorne Heights, the groups that want to reach the most people with their music, and consequently sell truckloads of records without compromising what makes them special. I suspect, however, these artists will become fewer and further between. When they do build out of their niches and grow organically, to all but the most jaded music fans, they will be welcome.

Still, the odds are that most artists who put themselves out there won't make it. It may be because they don't market well, they can't reach their audience, or nobody appreciates the particular gift they think they might have. This, of course, is nothing new; it's as old as the music business itself. Even during the boom time for the record business, "The turnover rate of artists at large companies can approach 40 percent annually; that translates into a lot of broken dreams and box-loads of unsold records," Paul Bernstein observed in the New York Times in 1973.

The turnover rate has grown in the intervening quarter century, with the added twist that record company employees turn over far more frequently, leaving artists stranded at record companies without an advocate. Even major record companies face the turnover problem – a major part of Hanson's problems with UMG was that while the group was away, Mercury Records ceased to exist. Consider the fate of another UMG band, Edenstreet. They signed with A&M in 1997 and recorded a debut album, which was even sent out to press and radio. Three days before the album was sent to ship, UMG shut down A&M Records entirely – very much the same way Mercury met its demise. No other UMG label picked up Edenstreet, sending the album to the limbo of unwanted recordings. "There are five guys sitting in Louisville," said one of the band members, "whose dreams have just been taken away on a whim. And it was so close – just three days."

The record business would seem to be entering a phase of what Dickens might call lesser expectations. As the greater part of the business struggles to deal with this, it trickles down to the artists as well. Even over 200 years ago, when the U.S. Constitution was written, its framers recognized the necessity of offering creative people an incentive to create, "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The question now becomes, how little incentive is the least for which an artist will create? At what point does an artist have to put aside creation for the business of making a living? Are "the useful arts" like music being "promoted" enough to ensure that they'll even exist on a professional level in 50 years?

The balance of art and commerce has always been a sticky problem for the creative person. Yet, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the record business's death have been greatly exaggerated. It is a time for radical change for the record business, and not many people are ready to step up and place their bets on the way things will shake out. But as Steffens put it:

At some point we are going to have to realize that the industry is never going to be the way it was. The old deals won't work, the old methods of delivery won't work. The old days of supporting companies won't work, but music will find its way to the consumer, if the music is worthy and the people behind it have the desire.

 "I really do believe," Majewski added, "that these are the most interesting times the industry has ever seen."

And as the old Chinese curse would have it, "May you live in interesting times."

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