Different kinds of business - Plus Ça Change in the Music Biz

I spent a very enjoyable day yesterday with Tony White, a music producer in Dalston who explained some of the vagaries of the music business as it is today to me.  And like I seem to find everywhere I look, there are some hopeful signs in amongst the seemingly endless gloom.  Sure the music biz is not what it used to be, a cash cow for major labels and publishers and successful song writers.  But music is still being made and, here's the interesting bit, sold.  Apparently certain genres, dance for instance, are still producing international hits that generate sales.  These are mainly via download and the artist is increasingly the main link in the chain.  Artists who manage everything from writing to recording to touring to sales are able to make a decent living when previously this was often only possible with the aid of music biz infrastructure that the labels could provide.  So music's becoming a niche product where singer/songwriters produce a lot of material for a smaller market but make more margin than they could have dreamed of under the label system.  Bit like it was before the '50s then?