selling our music

RO Admin Joined: Mar 20, 2000 Posts: 4284 Location: Canada

How is the music business going to survive this century with all the download sites etc?Is there going to be protection for our future songs and artists? Will retail stores selling CD's grow or will online download music take over?I believe there will always be the market for the actual CD especially for the countries that aren't wired but it sure makes me wonder.What are the answers to survival.looking forward to this topic.------------------ bigtree[This message has been edited by bigtree (edited November 06, 2000).]

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2000 8:11 pm

Excess vs. Moderation...Adapting to the wrong changes can be worse for survival than not adapting at all. Waiting until change takes place and then adapting is a safer bet. Or as Confuszte say, "Train coming, resist urge to jump until know which track on." That said, I don't think IRL music stores will never go out of style. But they will change. We will walk into the store, choose a selection, bring the liner notes/artwork/picture-gallery package up to the register, swipe our .mp3 stick thru the register (downloading the entire album in less than a second), and our credit account will be charged accordingly. Then we walk out of the store and plug the stick into our car/hovercraft/scooter/walkman-pc/home-stereo and it will be added to our entire collection. We will also be able to buy milk, bread, flatscreen tv's, and capuccino makers at the same place.The apparatus will still be the same for online purchases, but we will have the option of not killing a tree for the hardware portion (or at least not having to wait for it).A large portion of internet commerce which has still not been comprehensively implemented is "entertainment brokerage". This would be a service that automatically surfs the net for you, and displays only stuff you would find interesting. Of course, music would be a large part of this. Imagine a radio station that plays only songs you like all the time. These will be the record companies of tomorrow.I heard in the street that Napster might start charging $5 per year/month/whatever. Result of being assimilated by BMG?I can see Napster software sending a message to ASCAP or BMI whenever a song is downloaded, so that royalties can be paid out accordingly. Maybe the .mp3 of the future will have a digital watermark embedded into the audio of every song to further assist such tracking. Microsoft is trying to develop a new audio file format to do just that, but I think .mp3 is so widespread already they won't be able to compete.

RO Admin Joined: Mar 20, 2000 Posts: 4284 Location: Canada

Good vision Angelo.Have you checked out quixtar? This is their direction. It's very interesting. The delivery business is going to boom!See this FAQ page on liquid audio. <A HREF="http://www.recording.org/liquid" TARGET=_blank>http://www.recording.org/liquid</A> Let me know what you think.------------------ bigtree

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2000 11:55 pm

Never heard of quixtar. What's the website? I'm still not sold on liquid audio. They don't seem to have much push, whereas .mp3 started as a fluke and caught on like wildfire. Something seems to be missing here.

RO Admin Joined: Mar 20, 2000 Posts: 4284 Location: Canada

<A HREF="http://www.quixtar.com" TARGET=_blank>www.quixtar.com</A> It's a shopping network from first glance but once you read their vision and who's running it you soon realize what's going to happen with business over the net.A swiper on the kitchen counter and everything is automatic ordering from it to them. I'm a member of it since last year but it's still ahaed of time for me. Bill Gates is involved along with Amyay corporation and a few other biggies. Every major network from Ford to Sony will be affiliated.Big time stuff.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2000 11:33 pm

Looks interesting. The ditto thing is pretty cool. Didn't see anything on the website about who is running the thing.

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