Today when a composer wishes to record a six-minute musical composition written for an ensemble of 18 string instruments, one option is to pay about $50,000 for 18 musicians to product a professional recording. Another option is to pay $800 to firms such as Fauxharmonic Orchestra to create a recording using a computer program that re-creates the tones of the required 18 instruments. For most composers, this is an easy decision to make. As the price of computer-generated musical recordings has decreased, the demand for human musicians has declined.
What do you suppose has happened to the demand for string instruments used by performing musicians as a result of the decrease in demand for musicians services?