In the movie High Fidelity, record store owner Rob Gordon balefully asks himself: “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

A similar but more upbeat version of this question might apply to the music industry: did artists become more creative in response to the seismic shifts in the industry’s financial model, or did the creativity of a new generation of music stars force the industry to restructure?