For musicians it used to be a given that they could succeed only if a major record label discovered them and gave them a contract. Now you can go viral with a homemade YouTube video. Musicians today can build up an audience through online platforms; they no longer need major industry players.
Something similar can be observed in the case of high-priced encyclopedias, which today are being replaced by a widely-used free encyclopedia, based on the collective wisdom of many contributors.
The media industry is the first field where the full effect and extent of digital disruption can be clearly seen. One of the basic insights is that digital disruption usually eliminates many jobs because these simply turn out to be unnecessary in transformed markets, according to an article on the management-issues.com website.
Reduction in jobs
All the emerging technologies are fostering an urgent worldwide social problem. Jobs are permanently disappearing in dramatic numbers across all industries. Manufacturing jobs will be the most severely hit. Cashierless stores already exist and many other service jobs will disappear too. Moreover, some jobs of knowledge workers will be displaced by artificial intelligence.
Technology revolutions are the predecessor of economic revolutions. We will see how new ways of creating economic value emerge. There will also be new vehicles for the distribution of this new value. In the Industrial Age, the vehicle was jobs; in the approaching Digital Age, we are still waiting to see how better all the new wealth may be distributed.
-jk-