Their is always compromise: From changing a part because your drummer can't quite get the transition no matter how hard he works or the key being just out of your singer's range, to realizing that a song will alenate a paticular audience and not playing it live, to the compromises you have to make while recording an album, to 200 years ago when you had to keep a rich patron happy with whatever you wrote, to 500 years ago when a dimished chord could get you excommunicated.

I think what separates today from the past is that the business is far more commercialized than before. But it's still operating on the same basic rules it was 40 years ago.