money or cultural expansion

"Is it more important that music businesses make money, or is it more important that culture expands, innovates and grows?"

Another question posed by Andrew Dubber over at http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/10/30/heres-a-question-nobody-ever-asks

My initial thoughts:

They are both of equal importance.
BUT, record companies need to stop trying to 'make as much money as possible' mindset and change their goals to work FOR and WITH an artist in both an artistic sense AND a financial sense.
They need to start realising that they can make money from the long tail with new artists as well as established back catalogues.
Businesses need to reduce costs and become more efficient. when the business streamlines and reduces costs and accepts the new digital world, then they will be themselves opening up to a much more diverse cultural catalogue of music and then maybe, just maybe the radio stations will play more than the same 20 bland 'manufactured' trash songs 20 times a day, day in day out.

Case in point.
Wedding photographers.
They now have Digital Camera's and Photoshop. Yet they still charge the huge prices they did when they were still doing all the manual processing and darkroom work......I know a few friends who are great photographers who've capitalised on this and are now doing weddings for £150 - £200
You cant charge for what you don't do anymore because of a fundamental shift in technology.
The problem is the 'pro' wedding guys are stuck in a situation where they live their day to day lives based on their 'old' earnings, so they have a mortgage and a car that's based on £600-£1000 a wedding.
Technology has come in and said...'err no, you can now do that same job for £150-£300'
change or die as a new group of people come in and do your job for less.
I think far too many albums are recorded at far to much cost because the record companies are still stuck in a mindset that the more money it costs to record the better it will sound therefore the more it will sell.
And Producers/Record company executives are still living like the wedding photographers.........