Apple recently announced its new music subscription service, and much like anytime Apple unveils anything, the interwebs went berserk with commentary and criticism. I was interested as a music fan, and also because I’ve been fascinated with watching the music industry implode over the past 10 years.

What’s interesting to me is that the amount of money spent on music has gone way down while the amount of music consumers listen to has gone way up. Since the introduction of the iTunes Music Store in 2003, U.S. music sales have plummeted, from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion in 2013, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

What does that statistic mean? Some conclude digital music killed the music industry. That’s the picture the numbers seem to paint. But that’s not the whole story. Digital might have destroyed sales for record labels, but it has increased opportunities for artists. Digital music has removed the massive constriction of distribution and the result has been a renaissance.

I’ve always felt there was an incredible amount of great music that just never got heard. The record labels used to tightly control distribution and therefore enforce editorial control. We all listened to the same mega-hit bands. No longer. With online music distribution, artists can experiment, they can create, and they can be discovered. We see the results in the massive number of genres being listened to. Distribution constraints have been lifted, and now consumers have a near-infinite choice of music and artists.

I think what is interesting about Apple’s announcement is that it isn’t about speaking to record labels, it’s about speaking to artists and fans. They’re trying to build an ecosystem that allows artists to make money. The focus is on allowing artists and fans to connect and create their own editorial filters. In a world of near-infinite choice, this space is where I see the value being created. So Apple’s announcement was a reflection of the new shape of the industry—more then just a bunch of features.

This announcement made me wonder whether the same thing could happen in journalism. Talk about another broken industry! Every year it seems like the business outlook keeps getting worse for the established media companies—and for journalists. Does that mean there’s no hope for journalism? Or that people no longer value editorial opinion? I don’t think that’s the case. Personally, I’m tired of watching hilarious cat videos; I want to see a well-researched, balanced point of view. Just like in music, with unconstrained distribution of journalism content, consumers have a near-infinite choice. The value lies in the editorial process. In my opinion we are still evolving the model of how we capture the value of editorial content.

Is there an opportunity for someone to reinvent journalism the way Apple is trying to reinvent the music industry—where you could pay to connect directly to the source? I’m anxiously waiting to see what Jeff Bezos does with the Washington Post. Will he create ties to Amazon and build a national and international audience, study more about his readers, and turn journalism upside down with technology?

Both the music and media industries no longer have the shape they once had, and I find it promising that tech companies and titans are trying to find success in transforming them. In doing so they are changing the rules of distribution and consumption, and we’ll see some unexpected winners and losers.

We’re seeing something similar in IT. The data center industry is massive—an industry with $300 billion in market cap and $100 billion in revenue—and it is also going through a transition. The transition to the public cloud completely changes the rules for what it means to build a data center. And watching the incumbents struggle and flail during this shift is interesting. For some it’s also painful; somebody is going to write the new rules, and it’s probably not going to be the existing guys.

Marc Andreessen says that software is “eating the world.” In music and in journalism, the impact of software is unmistakable. Large, mature industries that touch nearly everyone are being completely redrawn as software and connectivity remove distribution constraints. Software is also turning back on itself, eating the industry that builds the machines that power the software that ate the world. As we move to a world where data center capacity is just a service level that anyone can rent from a massive computing grid, the $300B tech industry will be redrawn.