Ringo Starr turned 70...

...yesterday, and on Sunday the Times had a piece titled, "The Recording Industry, on the Ropes."

First of all, happy birthday to Mr. Starr. If I thought he was a reader of this blog, I would have dedicated yesterday's song of the day to him.

But reader of this blog or not, Ringo Starr has to be one of the luckiest people in history. Why? Because he was only a so-so drummer (as friends of mine who really know music tell me) who merely hitched his wagon to two musical geniuses? Yes, but for another reason. And that is that he and the Beatles emerged in a once-in-history window that lasted from the 1950s to around 2000 or so. This may have been the one time ever when musicians could get really, truly rich. Before then, records and record players weren't widely available globally and musicians had to make a living by performing. And afterward came the Internet, as the Times piece relates:

...I have had numerous conversations with musicians — both famous and obscure, but all of them doing important work — who lament that they are making much less money now that the major labels are on the ropes. Even Lady Gaga, the most popular singer in the world today, is feeling the pain. Her album sales are a fraction of the numbers that Britney Spears posted in the late 1990s at the height of her career.
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In a lengthy epilogue, Mr. Goodman assails members of the “technorati” who urge artists to give their music away online and make up the difference by selling more concert tickets and T-shirts.

I wonder sometimes if, fifty years from now, kids playing in bars will look back on the latter half of the 20th century as the Golden Age of making money in music. Or, to think of it another way, if Ringo Starr had been born in 1840 or 2040 instead of 1940, would he have just toiled away in obscurity?