An interesting, post-weekend read on the future of music, courtesy of CNET and The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In the end, they say, online music is just going to be too convenient, too cheap and too compelling to be ignored by the majors, and to be worthwhile for the pirates.
The article reckons that the glory days of the CD are over, even if what eventually replaces it – a streaming environment where you can access your music on the go, wherever you are — is going to take some time to be sufficiently ubiquitous and conceptually appealing. I’d tend to agree, especially with the article’s closing words, from Lee Black, a senior analyst covering music and media for Jupiter Media, the Internet data firm: “I think you will always have a free (pirating) market,” Black says. “What you have to do is make the legitimate market much easier to use than the free market.”