Shut up the print music stores, now.
I used to be in print music retail, and I can tell you just why the bricks-n-mortar paradigm has no place for contemporary music -- which is horrible, because more than other kinds of concert music, you need to be able to examine the score before buying. To the extent that it has existed at all, it's because of cross-subsidy by other forms of print, primarily method books and popular music, and people who care enough that they forgo the extra buck to keep an item on a shelf for a year or two.
We've known that print music has been ailing for some time. There has been consolidation in the industry, with companies merging with those companies whose order fulfillment is quick, accurate, and high-discount (in short, as much like online as possible). We've been told that the photocopier is the culprit. But to photocopy an item, somebody somewhere has to buy it sometime.
Now, I've been doing a sort of public service librarian gig at Yahoo Answers. And one of the most frequently-asked questions is, "Where can I download [piece of usually-copyright print music] for free?" Some of us have answered, "You can't; it's under copyright".
I was a bit horrified when I started exploring some of these sites. I knew somebody once whose computer crashed while they were in an AOL chat room, and when they logged back on, their screen name was stuck in a kiddie porn trading room. It wasn't quite that horrifying; I don't go all moralistic on people about illegal downloads. But I could see where the economics were going. You can get just about anything in popular music, for free. Some sites are members-only trading, but at some of them, a pdf download was just a click away. I tried one download, of an item I used to sell (and no, I have no use for this except for research, and will be deleting the file). No, it wasn't a copy of the original. Rather, the original had been imported into a notation program. It appeared to be relatively accurate and literate, but nothing fancy (no dynamics, for instance).
Here's the problem: consider that RIAA has been suing the pants off anyone they can, and have accomplished little except to make themselves unpopular. MPA doesn't have those kind of deep pockets. And there is no more that can be done about print music downloads than audio downloads. Even in a secure online sales system like Sunhawk, there is nothing to keep the end-user from scanning the print, changing the format, and putting it up as a .pdf somewhere.
What this means is that the price of popular print music will tend towards zero. All published print can add is nicer paper and better accuracy, vs. a price and massive inconvenience in getting it. Legal downloads won't even have the nice paper. Classical print will end up like classical music, with the big players exiting the scene, to be taken over by niche marketers. I don't know if Subito will be the Naxos of classical print, but parallels could be drawn.
Where does that leave me? I'd planned on a big push this year to make as much of my music as possible available in print. I'm still going to do that, but even niche publishers have a limited future. I've been resistant to doing the self-publish thing, but ultimately, it may be my only choice.
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