After doing some net snooping, I found out one thing. One of the battles fought in the music world today is the war on corporate-control. It seems that everyone is sick of big record labels taking over everything. The logical development that would happen to the music world is independent distribution.

People have been finding ways to sell their music besides the old and outdated cd’s. Radiohead has pioneered a user based method to sell their music. It won’t take long for music to be easily accessible and purchased wherever you are. The new iPod Touch boasts of a “mobile” iTunes store which enables you to purchase music directly from your iPod as long as you’re connected to the web.

Accessibility+portability= convenience .: exposure! This would enable bands with talent but lack exposure to get to show their stuff. Let us not forget that wireless Internet connections are relatively new and the future will only bring faster connections. Having to buy music from stores will be a thing of the past.

One big problem are claims to intellectual rights. Technology has made music distribution easier but does not financially reward the artist. Artists then have no real choice until a good model comes out since they’re currently in a double loss situation.

Today’s technology enables us to do many things. We have video and audio streaming. People are claiming legal rights shiznits here and there about the distribution of their music in this way. The problem is that the corps’ want most, artists want more and listeners want more for less. Surely, even in such a mess, a swell enough business model can emerge.

It seems that Radiohead’s methods have proven successful as they have just topped the U.K. Album Chat with “In Rainbows” just after they have made it easily available online.

Music that is illegitimately distributed will forever be debated upon. There is actually one thing that people tend to miss out. Some people actually want to pay for their music. Even if it seems like a drag to buy the real thing because it costs money, people still buy the real thing. I got to read on some stuff from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html which really got me. There are things that people are willing to pay for besides the actual merchandise. Some of these would be immediacy, authenticity, findability and personalization. I believe that it is safe to say that we are, forgive the terminology, a social-trumping group. We love to one-up everyone else and we are willing to pay quite a sum, even, just to have the best things.

http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/08/the_future_of_t.html