From artefacts to celebrity?

In a brief discussion about the threat that digital reproduction makes to sales of tangible product like CDs this article
Pop music: Still with the Beatles | Comment is free | The Guardian has as it's nearly-parting shot: "Perhaps those industries that have always been about artefacts – records, periodicals and books – will end up thinking more about performances.
Which seems to be likely to me. I'm sitting in the midst of the Greenbelt Festival as I write, having just been browsing a bit of the site filled with 'product' (books in this case, mostly) and reflecting on the interplay of performance and product sales. The article points out that it has long been the case that musicians have had to engage in live performance to make money as all but the very top sellers cannot make money from sales of recordings. In whtich case, one might suppose, the role of the 'record company' becomes the thing that is really threatened: the best they can offer is a nexus to promote, organise performance and associated memorabilia. There is a big motive for possible dis-intermediation: to DIY: the technology is in our hands it is merely the promo power of the big boys that might be covetable and sometimes the economies of scale devolving from that.

So my interest and questioning is piqued by the issue of whether in the emerging digital economy 'product' is giving way more fully to the personal? Which is something that has interesting resonances for those of us who like to think theologically ... the down-side may be that the same forces push towards the cult of celebrity which I am less sure gives rise to a healthy balance of things ... but that too would seem to be a likely trajectory for things from where we are now ...