A decade of war on its customers got the music industry nowhere, but now the internet is actually boosting sales.

The music industry has been through tough times in the last 15 years, although much of it was self-inflicted. It's hard to feel too sorry for a bunch of pig-headed, gucci-clad industry executives who were too arrogant and stubborn to see the writing on the wall.

Music

They were told from the beginning that if you make it easier to buy music than to steal it, most people will do the right thing. Instead they stuck with heavy-handed legal tactics, draconian Digital Rights Management and underhanded trickery such as installing malicious software on people's computers (yes Sony, I'm looking at you).

To the industry's great surprise, treating customers like criminals didn't encourage them to buy more music from their local record store. Meanwhile the music industry was dragged kicking and screaming into the age of digital downloads -- eventually offering easy ways to buy music online as well as innovative new models such as subscription music services. The record companies deserve no credit for "leading the way", it's more that new-tech giants such as Apple seized the initiative and now have them over a barrel. You could say the same for most big players in pretty much every old-world content industry, former giants who failed to embrace the rise of the internet and are now being overrun by nimble new-world competitors.