Net Results: After a moribund phase in which it seemed the music industry was going to stick its head in the sand, online music services are really beginning to take off.
According to analyst Jupiter Research, the online music market in the US is to grow from around $100 million (€80 million) in 2003 to $1.7 billion in 2009. At the same time, sales of music through more conventional media such as CDs and tapes have become sclerotic. You can see where this is going - the computer is going to win out as the purchasing and storage medium of choice.
Already, this year has been a bumper year for the creation of services, after Apple kick-started a mass market for downloads in 2003 with its iTunes service. Microsoft, Sony, RealNetworks, and even Coca-Cola all offer music downloads now.
And Virgin this week announced it will offer 99 cent tracks from a service that will initially only be available in the US. Virgin founder Richard Branson says he plans to open online music stores outside the US, too.
In Europe, HMV and a resurrected Napster offer UK-based services and, over the summer, we finally got Apple's iTunes service in Europe, also based out of the UK. Until now, Europeans couldn't avail of the service at all, although it had been available for some time in the US.
As with Virgin, the reason for this anomaly (enforced by requiring a US-based credit card) is down to the complex licensing in the music business - agreements hammered out with distributors in the US might have no meaning in Europe because some other entity manages the distribution over here.
Therefore, Apple had to negotiate a second set of agreements, now done and dusted - although the company is having some hassle with the British Consumers Association, which wants to know why iTunes songs cost more in Britain than in euro-based countries or the US. Whether the complaint goes anywhere remains to be seen.
I was initially a Napster fan, and no stranger to getting my music online, although I was often frustrated by the poor quality of Napster downloads.
Ironically, the musical roulette a Napster user had to play is one reason why a market gradually emerged for legitimate, quality downloading services - although to prove attractive, they needed the kind of business and service model pioneered by Apple.
I've made much use of iTunes for the past year myself, using the US site (because I have a US-based credit card). I also am a big fan of eMusic, a service that used to offer almost unlimited downloads but moved to a subscription-based, 40 downloads a month model a few months ago. EMusic, which recently announced it will undergo a complete overhaul, offers music from independent labels.
I love the ease of downloading music, and I increasingly manage my music collection mostly though my PC or my Mac laptop. This is so much easier than using a storage format like a CD - not only is it more space-efficient, with everything stored on computer (with DVD backups), it's also simple to create flexible playlists that can cycle through hours of music without me having to jump up to change the CD-player.
Rather than play the music directly through the PC, I tend to use my iPod, connected to my stereo system. I've recently managed to fill my 10-gigabyte-capacity iPod as well, something I once believed well-nigh impossible, although I can shuffle around the music I want to keep on the iPod and store the rest on the laptop.
Though I tend to think of this way of managing music as the norm, I realise from friends' surprised reactions to the iPod/stereo combination that it is not. But as Jupiter's figures show, it soon will be.
For that to happen, however, all the music services I've examined or used will need to offer much better content. By that I don't mean more artists, although it would be convenient not to have to roam between services to locate artists that have signed with one but not another.
Instead, I'd like the services to provide the basic information on artists and recordings that I get from looking at a CD in the local music shop. Why do so many services not even bother with a release date for the recording? Or a most basic discography?
Services need to make better use of the Web as a medium, too. EMusic offers chatrooms and the ability to put together user playlists - obvious features that all services should have - but I'd like reviews, similar to those Amazon lets its site-users create.
Come to think of it, online CD music stores offer reviews and discography, so why not iTunes and eMusic?
Once services really begin to take advantage of the Web and its ability to create online communities, make reams of information easily available, and whisk music instantly to users, the Web will really have most bricks-and-mortar stores beat.
Incidentally, for some free Irish downloads and plenty of artist information, pay a visit to www.irishmusiccentral.com. It is not a thing of beauty, but the content is sure to delight any lover of all kinds of Irish music.
The site is a recent discovery for me - great for tracking who is playing where, and test-driving some songs to try out whether various artists appeal or not.
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