None of this meant that music got worse. There were still great songs being written and great performances given. Recording became cheap, the ability to record music and reach an audience became more democratic, and access to the entire history of recorded music became easy. But the idea that there were major new continents of unexplored music slowly faded. The frontier had been colonised. We had discovered the edges of the territory.
Bill Drummond did not know this at the time. Despite machine-gunning the music industry at the point when its engines of creativity died, he did not imagine that he really was killing it. Correlation does not imply causation, after all. But regardless of what he thought he was doing, he was still the one man in the room whose actions were in sync with the wider picture.
As the band left the stage a voice declared over the PA: 'The KLF have left the music industry.' This wasn't intended as a statement of fact or premonition, but as a challenge to themselves.
John Higgs - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds
