You know all there is to know about the disintegration of music publishing, in part because you’ve lived it, and in part because you’ve done your homework. You know the newspaper-publishing business is getting killed because you can hear Rupert Murdoch squealing. You know the movie business is hurting. And of course you know the book-publishing industry is coming apart at the spine.
But even as all this is happening in concert, and even as the internet looms large in every instance, there are still people explaining how what’s happening in one industry has nothing to do with what’s happening in another industry. Or how it’s the recession that’s causing these problems. (It’s not.)
To this litany of carnage now add the computer gaming industry. On Monday Electronic Arts (EA), one of the the largest developers and publishers of interactive titles, announced that it was cutting 1,500 jobs. If that was the end of the story we could chalk up the layoffs to the recession, but that’s not the end of the story. [ Read more ]