First of all, software is not a creative industry. Creatives always took home a small fraction for many obvious reasons.
Software solves hard problems it is constantly evolving and updating so you need lots of personnel to maintain it, with a lot of knowledge so it will never be cheap, and great engineers to create it in the first place.
Take away a bunch of artists nothing will change. Take away a bunch of critical software - the world will stop.
So no, it will last and it will last long, as the world becomes more and more technological.
It is unprecedented because software and computer world in general is a huge breakthrough and is only 30 years old. Music on the other hand is thousands of years.
Not agreeing with GP, but I think your comparison here is a bit flawed.
Art is a broad concept - it doesn't suggest any specific form or delivery. Software is fairly concrete - it has to be run on a computer.
A more appropriate comparison would be art versus scientific research, or art versus engineering. I think that's a more interesting question, to which I would say: perhaps we could survive without either, but I can't imagine we'd thrive without both.
Software solves hard problems it is constantly evolving and updating so you need lots of personnel to maintain it, with a lot of knowledge so it will never be cheap, and great engineers to create it in the first place.
Take away a bunch of artists nothing will change. Take away a bunch of critical software - the world will stop.
So no, it will last and it will last long, as the world becomes more and more technological.
It is unprecedented because software and computer world in general is a huge breakthrough and is only 30 years old. Music on the other hand is thousands of years.