Taking a cue from the cyber-bard John Perry Barlow, I believe we could be seeing a paradigm shift from the domination of the "music business" to that of the "musician business."
 
The same forces that are undoing the larger music companies are empowering individual musicians. And as a result, the idea of a 'music career' is sprouting new wings as artists and industry careerists begin discarding intoxicating myths and tapping into some new-found powers.

Powers deriving from desktop computers and digital recording gear, from a hyperabundance of entrepreneurial and self-development resources, a segmenting (and reachable) music marketplace, and most importantly, from the Internet - the first tool that puts a global communication and distribution "channel" into the musician's hands.

As venture-funded dotcoms rose, crashed and burned, a quiet revolution has been slowly but surely mounting; one that threatens to turn the music industry on its head. In a peculiar way, the computer sets the music industry back 300 years.

Consider: Musicians of the past performed songs
for royal and religious "patrons" and received support (patronage) in return. It was a direct connection between musician and audience, as small as it was.

Today, with the Net, musicians are capable of galvanizing global audiences, nurturing them through generous communications, and building support models to help them earn a sufficient living. In other words, the Net allows the patron model to re-emerge only this time, rather than having one exclusive patron, a musician may have thousands.

It's a slow-growth strategy but with a pace and quality entirely in the hands of artists and their teams. "Patrons" subscribe for a reasonable price ($30-40/year?) for access to the artist, first call for all new tracks, and extra values like discounted tickets, fully- packaged recordings, posters and exposure to any other works of the artist.

Musicians and bands like Jonatha Brooks, Scooter Scudieri, Maktub, Christine Lavin and Aimee Mann are all using the digital channel (alongside recordings and performances) to grow and nurture supportive fan bases in this way. Again, slow but sure. If you're putting out awesome music, then build it and they will come.