When he asks if musicians should have to be jacks of all trades (being the creative force as well as doing their own marketing), it’s somewhat like how most workers now have to do things way outside of what is supposed to be their specialty. Since the onset of personal computing, salespeople, technicians, artists, accountants also have to be their own secretaries, spreadsheet creators, PowerPoint specialists, etc. In my company and most other large corporations now, people who are technical who aren’t adept at these skills, along with the ability to “manage” and “influence”, are relegated to being “button-pushers” and likely outsourced. Now the button-pushers have gone out and built their own industries, providing services to the corporations that outsourced them.

So if you equate musicians to being the “button-pushers”, Mellencamp’s right – they’ll have to find a new way of doing things and rebuild their own business the way they want it to be. I hope they do.

I am very taken by the phrase “consumes intellectual capital”