The digital revolution - the other end

Everyone knows that digital music distribution is a way to cut out the
middlemen, you don't need to have a record company contract in order
to disseminate music to fans, thanks to mp3's and the internet. The
other end of this, not really discussed much, is the production end.
To produce decent sounding songs suitable for radio play it used to be
musicians had to go to a recording studio, which was not cheap. That,
in addition to distribution, gave the recording industry a
stranglehold on musicians. An essential part of any record deal was an
advance, which was a loan to the musicians to pay for the studio time.
It was a gamble for the record companies, as a band who's album didn't
sell could not afford to pay back the advance but considering the
money recording companies have brought in throughout the years it has
worked well for them. Home studio's became available for musicians, in
the form of 4 track cassette recorders by Fostex and TASCAM. The
quality of these was not very good(I had one), so musicians still
needed to go to a recording studio if they wanted a high quality
recording. Fast forward to 2009, and now you have high quality,
affordable digital multitrack recorders, as well as software you can
run on your computer to turn it into a multitrack recording machine. A
home recording studio capable of producing professional sounding
recordings has now become affordable, for less than it would cost to
go into a professional studio musicians can now buy their own. What
this means is that not only don't musicians need the recording
industry for distribution, unless they require some really fancy(and
expensive) sound effects, they don't need them for music production
either.