Would the Beatles Have Made It Today?

Here's an interesting question to debate while you're waiting with your mates between bands at your next gig: if the Beatles started today would they still be as big?

While this article at MSNBC.com doesn't actually supply an answer it does offer some interesting insight into the changing face of the music industry between the '60s and today.

Speaking to a number of former music industry executives the article concludes that ultimately "talent rules" but things would certainly have been a lot tougher had the Fab Four found themselves transported 50 years into the future.

For one thing the old music business model no longer exists. "There's less passion in both the consumer and the record industries themselves," former Elektra Records president Mel Posner says. "It's too easy for a record company now to say, 'Well, we tried,' and let's pass after only one album."

The Beatles invasion of America would have been tougher too. Today labels don't support touring bands like they used to.

"In those days, there was a lot more latitude by the record companies, because they were independent," Posner said. "They didn't have Wall Street looking over their shoulders. You invested in an artist not just for one album, but for a career. At Elektra, there was an ease, a more relaxed attitude about putting out albums and starting careers with artists."

Although the flipside is that if you're successful independence can make you a lot richer. Interestingly, another former music executive, John Hartmann -- who worked with acts such as the Eagles and Crosby, Stills & Nash -- believes that the decline of the major music labels caused by free downloading is a good thing.

"I am happy they're dead because they were horrible," he told msnbc. "They were awful people and it was their greed that prevented them from seeing the future."