Scott McGibbon

Scott McGibbon is Project Specialist at the Norman Lear Center.

Despite the cultural popularity of American Idol and continuing sky-high touring profits for artists like Madonna and U2, the recording industry continues to stare into an abyss of vanishing record sales, pirated content and a once-solid business model in tatters. Record company staffs have been eviscerated, and anything like a profitable future looks like smoke in the wind.

The Lear Center's Popular Music Project, which studies popular music in every way you can think of, wrapped up this year with an endeavor that might offer music producers as well as music lovers a few rays of hope. PMP Artist-in-Residence Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, asked an undergraduate working group of students from

Scott McGibbon

Scott McGibbon is Project Specialist at the Norman Lear Center.

At the second annual Producer Guild's "Produced By" conference last month, veteran television and movie producer Marshall Herskovitz expressed deep concern that the headlong push of content to every new platform by media conglomerates could end up reducing the value of that content and cheapen the audience experience.

Days later, I watched a YouTube clip of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing in Swingtime on my laptop - already a platform far from the full movie screen the film was originally intended for - and marveled again that this was at my fingertips whenever I wanted it.

The next day, while waiting in line to order lunch, I pulled up the same clip on my iPhone