I’ve always been confused about Madonna’s attempts to be relevant in this decade.

She epitomized the ’80s with her high, innocent voice bouncing above ecstatic beats. If you’re operating only at the level of brain stem, it’s a great listen, and as a historical piece, her work exemplifies just the delusional “holiday” everyone needed from Reaganomics, recession and violent cities. But what about 2004’s “American Life,” the album that needed an on-screen faux lesbian stunt to sell?

Last month, however, Madonna decided to do something surprising and completely relevant. The difference is that this time she’s thinking about distributing music rather than creating it. While the goal of musicians for much of this century has been the coveted record deal – the pinnacle of a high-school rocker’s daydream – Madonna, or some very smart advisor, has foreseen the end of this model as the industry’s real moneymaker. (Too bad no one was so wise about “American Life.”)

Embracing the realities of crippled earnings from records, Madonna has decided to discontinue her deal with Warner Brothers to sign with a tour promotion company, Live Nation, instead.

She still has to put out one more record before Warner Brothers will let her go, but this decision highlights the largest change in focus the music industry has endured since the bulk of profits switched from sheet music to record sales.

Back then, making money in music was a combination of concerts and selling written music, since, before recording was developed, anyone interested in hearing music had to be able to play or be in the same room as someone who could play. Learning everything by memory – especially when music was much less repetitious than it is now – was too much of a challenge to accomplish without sheet music.

With the advent of recording, those problems were solved. Records became the breadwinners of the industry, and all other efforts – such as touring, magazine articles and advertisements – served only to convince the public to buy a given artist’s records.

But now, due to widespread music piracy, the roles of concerts and recording have reversed. While touring used to be a way to generate buzz about an upcoming album, it and its associated merchandise are now the industry’s best way to make money. It’s not that touring profits have somehow grown to overshadow records, but rather that this is really the only option the industry has left. Only the things that can’t be downloaded – like the experience of seeing your favorite band live or a T-shirt or some rare seven-inch – are the things they can sell.

It seems to me that if Madonna’s strategy catches on, the role of albums will get even closer to the role of advertisements than it already has. Artists will produce music for the goal of bringing fans to concerts, and the rights to the recorded music will be public or, as is currently the case, ineffectually enforced.

The other likely outcome is that the management side of the music will consolidate from separate managing and recording entities to a single group, like Live Nation, handling all of an artist’s output. If the big record companies run out of steam, it makes sense for the tour promotion groups, which stand to benefit from “album-as-advertisement” in the first place, to take on recording duties as well as managing and marketing.

So far, these changes – recordings-as-advertisements and artists moving away from record companies – are only partial. MySpace offers the chance to stream a few tracks from most bands for free, and MTV provides its own streaming “leaks,” but listeners still have to pay up for the full album. Also, Madonna’s new strategy hasn’t yet been embraced by many other artists. This is probably because there are still sales to be had, especially with performers who have name recognition spanning generations. Not everyone knows how to download, and some guilty consciences turn into record purchases.

Still, my guess is that profits will continue to fall. In 10 years or so, everyone 30 and under will have grown up in the age of the Internet, and many will never have been to a record store. Gift cards for iTunes make great birthday presents. And considering the speed with which piracy technology develops, the likelihood of effectively policing downloads seems low.

So while the music may not capture the times, the business model does.