(via Vincent Flanders) Clay Shirky comments on the mass amateurization of publishing; that is, how weblogs undermine the norms of commercial, professional publishing models.
A lot of people in the weblog world are asking “How can we make money doing this?” The answer is that most of us can’t.
His deeper point is that this is not a bad thing. It’s a price to be paid for the ease of low thresholds that have invited so many more people into the public conversation. He’s just saying that looking for a monetary reward for most bloggers is barking up the wrong tree.
I would wonder whether this same form of mass-amateurization will also sweep through the music world.