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Forecast: Song Costs May Fall Like Rain

Steven Levy, Msnbc, Sept 28, 2004
Commentary by Stephen Downes

See, it's not just me. As NewsScan Daily summarizes it, "The music industry is fighting a losing battle, says Newsweek columnist Steven Levy, who says the RIAA's legal tactics make about as much sense as trying to sue a hurricane." Yup.

And the music industry's problems may just be beginning. In this Wall Street Journal article (normally subscription, but Google cached a daily freebie) we read about a CD of free (and freely sharable) music being released by Wired.

Meanwhile Microsoft is testing a commercial-free web based radio service that costs $30 per year.

And Sony has embraced the popular MP3 file fomat (the same format I use for my audio clips).

And Yahoo's purchase of Musicmatch is "has raised speculation that it plans to use the acquisition to enable Yahoo Messenger users to share and interact with one another's digital playlists," something Microsoft is also doing with MSN Messenger and a test application called ThreeDegrees. Do you see a pattern here? I see a pattern here. How long before commercial music becomes the exception, rather than the rule.

Audacity, anyone?

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