What’s happening to rock stars and Hollywood actors isn’t new…

Something has struck me about one of the major challenges facing entertainment celebrities – along with the though that maybe many more ‘normal’ people have faced something very similar over the last century.

In the past, people with in skilled manual occupations spent years learning their trade and craft, served apprenticeships, and worked their way up to a point where they had experience that gave them security – until in many cases machines were able to offer lower cost solutions which put them under threat.

Now actors and musicians who have worked at their craft for years, and been fortunate enough to have built long enough careers to become established face technology which mean that the skills they’ve built up alongside their talent – finding management, working with record companies and film studios, etc, suddenly gets challenged by the fact anyone with talent can produce a song and distribute it digitally, or create a film for a relatively low cost and release it via the internet.

I’m just wondering if other people think that this is one reason why some celebrities are taking the hugely proactive step of writing a letter to The Times complaining about the fact that internet piracy is apparently threatening the fact that the creative sector, according to the letter ‘comprises 7 per cent of the total economy, and is growing faster than any other sector.’ A bit of a paradoxical argument if ever I heard one.