what is the future of music publishing?

While I wholeheartedly agree with the previous poster, I think he missed the crux of your question - that of PUBLIC DOMAIN music.

Printed music is expensive. If it were cheaper, I suspect more people would be prepared to put their hands in their pockets. However, some works which have been in print for many, many years are still prohibitively expensive for some. Downloading and printing from IMSLP will not give the same fine quality of finished article that a professionally produced book of music will provide. This won't matter to some, but will to others; you pays your money (or not) and takes your choice...

Some publishers have already got their act together to enable people to download music from their sites, but it is is still too expensive in some cases. Many small publishers have now been swallowed-up by giants such as Music Sales who are large enough to subsidise their meagre classical sales through other channels which make them more money. Some of the large publishers seem to remain greedy, however.

I think prices will be forced down, but, as a result, we might lose some of the few remaining small publishers who will not be able to survive with their large overheads.

All this having been said, I hope that piracy continues to attract heavy penalties, sending-out a clear message that illegally downloading copyrighted material is THEFT (let's not dress it up (or down)), deprives musicians of their livelihood and is unacceptable behaviour (just as walking into a book shop and helping yourself to books you want to read would be unacceptable).

To be honest, it really depends on how much record companies decide to crack down on this sort of thing. I really don't think that record companies will honestly lower their prices as far as music sales go. Limewire itself has finally been made illegal and the creators of the software have to pay back in return how much music was illegally downloaded. With that kind of punishment you can bet that there will be less "software sharing" sites in the future, which insinuates that record companies and music publishers won't change a whole lot. You also have to understand that there is a large crowd out there that is still willing to pay for music the right way and even buy albums from stores physically or digitally.

I hope that's what you were looking for.

p00p