The new sound (and business) of music

[Lerch]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-new-...ness-of-music/

Though live music is always best, most of us enjoy most of our music most of the time through recordings ... and these days we can listen to our favorite tunes in more ways than ever. Our Cover Story is reported now by John Blackstone: This morning, we're showcasing the very latest in high-end audio technology. Yes, vinyl long-playing records, introduced back in 1930, are still state-of-the-art (that is, if you play them on a $50,000 Brinkmann Balance turntable).

"We stream more hours of music every month than YouTube streams hours of video," he said. "Around 80 million people come every month to Pandora. So we actually are now the biggest radio station in virtually every market in the U.S."

Garling says that today's musicians would be wise to follow the business model of a San Francisco band that found fortune long before the Internet Age: the Grateful Dead. The Dead encouraged their tie-dyed fans to record concerts and trade tapes. Others in the music business considered that stealing.

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir may be showing more than a touch of gray these days, but he hasn't lost his enthusiasm for playing and promoting music -- and he sees live performances streamed on the Internet as a way young musicians can build their fan base. Weir recently founded the Tamalpais Research Institute, just north of San Francisco, perhaps the world's most high-tech studio for streaming live audio and video on the Internet.