What have David Bowie, Underworld, TLC, Rage against the Machine and Public Enemy got in common? Well, they have all released music over the Internet.
A recent survey in the US suggests that by 2002, online music sales will exceed $1 billion. In theory, the music industry is highly enthusiastic about increasing online sales, as they can be expected to turbocharge profits - retailers alone take a mark-up of 30 per cent on each CD they sell, so removing the retailer from the transaction leaves the record company with a far healthier chunk of the retail price.
Distributing music over the Net also removes the cost of CD, packagers and distributors from the equation, thus boosting record-industry profit-margins still further. That is, of course, unless these savings are passed on to the consumer. . .
At the opposite end of the spectrum, impoverished bands are increasingly using the Web as a valuable promotional tool. Visitors to www.cluas.com or www.thumped.com can download free of charge music from a variety of as-yet-unsigned Irish bands.
For the music industry, though, there's one rather large fly in the ointment - digital piracy. Until quite recently, the quality of downloaded music was so poor it was not worth the lengthy download to get the sound as far as a PC. Advances in compression technology, however, have vastly improved the sound-quality of digital music. At the same time, file-sizes have been shrunk, making for easier downloads.
For the industry, the problem with compression methods such as MP3 is that they are not secure. Anyone with the relatively modest hardware required and the inclination can convert a sound to MP3 format and post it on the Net. It's even easier for someone who wants that sound (or track, or entire album) to download and play it.
As a result, pirate recordings proliferate on the web. The Lycos site (mp3.lycos.com) offers to search web-wide for favourite songs. Most of these have been posted without the permission of the copyright holder. Those who need MP3 player software, can download it without charge at the same site, enabling them to listen to their favourite music (if it's there; the collection is patchy) without having to stump up 15 quid for a CD.
In July, Paul McCartney fell victim to a pirate with an ironic sense of humour when a song from his most recent album was posted on the Internet. The song I Got Stung was previewed by the BBC, snared by bootleggers and converted to MP3. A number of US radio stations subsequently downloaded it and played it over the air.
As if this wasn't enough to have music executives grinding their teeth, a host of other companies has followed the consumer electronics firm Diamond in producing portable MP3 players. These handheld devices, similar to their tape-based ancestor the Walkman, can be used to play downloaded sounds away from the PC.
The music industry is not taking this lying down. Last year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to get an injunction to prevent Diamond from marketing its Rio player, claiming that facilitated copyright infringement on a grand scale. Similar actions have been taken by the industry against consumer electronics firms in the past. Universal took Sony to court over the VCR and CBS took issue with Amstrad over the twin-deck cassette player. The RIAA, like Universal and CBS before it, failed. The judge ruled that the Rio facilitated personal, non-commercial and legal recording.
Increasingly, however, the search for legal redress is becoming a rearguard action within the recording industry and the battle against the bootleggers is being fought on another front. It's general thrust is "if you can't beat 'em. . ."
Last February, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) came into being. This is a forum driven by the recording industry, together with representatives from consumer electronics and computing companies. Their objective is to make the Internet a secure (and profitable) place to distribute music.
SDMI has already settled on a specification for a portable device which will play music files using a technology similar to MP3 but which - and this is the crucial bit - will prevent files from being copied and dispatched to the non-paying customer. Philips, Matsushita, Toshiba and Sanyo have all announced intentions to market SDMI-compliant portable digital music players. Even Diamond has patched up its differences with the recording industry and teamed up with the SDMI - the next generation Rio will work with the initiative.
It may be a while before CD collections are bundled into the attic alongside those old vinyl records in favour of digital music files. (If and when it happens there are bound to be some people who claim that digital music just doesn't have the same feel as CDs.)
One hurdle the recording industry will have to overcome is the absence of uniformity. Different consumer electronics firms are teaming up with different computing companies to propagate different formats for the secure music file.
Given the fear of becoming the Betamax of the digital music industry, nearly all the new formats support MP3. Moreover, the speed with which the music market moves these days means that the SDMI may founder before consensus can be built up. If that happens, expect the industry to start dragging pirates before the courts with considerably more vigour than it has shown up to now.