Serious question: how much do you actually know about Steve Albini? Are you a Big Black fan? Are you at all acquainted with the Chicago punk scene he's from? Have you read anything else he's written, for instance about any band not from that scene? Or, for that matter, any of the story of his business relationship with the labels? And you know how he makes his money, right? (hint: not by touring Shellac).

(I am an unabashed and somewhat obsessive Albini fan).

I think at this point you can safely assume that anyone writing an opinion about the music industry has read that old Albini zine post.

If you'd read Lowery's post, I think you'd see that he in several ways rebuts it.

I've followed him enough, can't stand his music because it sounds like noisy, barely competent shit to me and I know he makes his money just like Timbaland makes his money - getting paid on the back-end for production work. I can safely assume that most everybody has NOT read that article based on the ridiculous notion that somehow the music industry has changed its principles and methods since my family got started in the business in the late 1960s.

Why would I take seriously a person who says "Sound recordings are not cheap to make" and goes on to state "Artists still have to pay for that highly skilled labor" when frankly neither of these are true? Maybe it is for musicians who live in a 1960-1995 dynamic, but I have more computing and music making power and ability in my home studio than I know what to do with. Recording studios are dying by the dozens. For all the talk of disruption, that's one legacy industry that is taking it on the chin. Lowery is part of the problem, not the solution. Plus he tosses out anecdotes like "For a very long period of time record labels provided a decent living to thousands of lucky artists" and cites...nothing...

So the most ground breaking conclusion he has is Free+Streaming+Digital Sales? WOW. It's my business model for the past 10 years! Boy did I learn something from this guy! Oh, wait, no I didn't. That link is one of the most rambling and thinly veiled self-serving "discussions" of music in the new digital environment. I'll eventually study it more, simply to use it as cannon fodder for rebuttals. Thanks for sharing, I can always use more proof I know what I'm doing is right.

I can't tell whether you're talking about Albini or Lowery here.

I think Albini is shackled to view of the industry that rejects anything that doesn't sound like The Jesus Lizard. For a good example of this: read the very long thread on the Electric Audio message board where his fans try to find a hip-hop track he'll like.