The combination of inexpensive speedy computers with burgeoning storage capacity, the wide availability of high-speed Internet connections, and the public's growing familiarity with digital music formats (like MP3) and the portable hardware on which to play them (such as Apple's iPod) have set the stage. Add to that the recording industry's decision to license most of its musical inventory to a growing number of paid online services, including Apple's iTunes, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Napster of Roxio, MusicMatch, BuyMusic.com, BestBuy, and Wal-Mart, and the conditions are in place for computers to be an exciting and thriving source of music for consumers and a growth business for the industry.

The clear leader in the field so far is Apple's iTunes, with more than 25 million tracks downloaded at the new industry standard price of $.99 per song and $9.99 per album, close to a million and a half iPods sold, aggressive marketing deals with AOL and Pepsi, and glowing PR for Apple for having created the model of a digital music service that works.

As an alternative to the pay-per-song model, Sean Ryan of RealNetworks predicts a subscription download service in 2004. "The idea is that consumers can download as many songs as they want, and move them from one device to others, but at the end of 30 days, if you don't pay the subscription fee, the songs go away," he told the NY Times. "You've got a portable music player that can fit 10,000 songs on it? Come on. No one will spend $1 a track filling it.''

Good point - in fact until recently it seemed unlikely many would be willing to pay for music over the Internet at all.

How We Got Here

Not too long ago you bought music on vinyl, tape, or CD and if you wanted to make a copy for portable use in your car or Walkman or to share with a friend, you manually recorded it, typically onto cassette. But then the Internet dawned and with it the digital communication age and a fundamental shift in the nature of copying and sharing.

A digital copy of a song can be reproduced any number of times without wearing out or degrading in quality, and made available over the Internet, can be freely copied any number of times by any number of people. No wonder the original Napster file-sharing service so freaked out the music industry when it was launched as a free music clearinghouse in 1999. (The industry has blamed unauthorized sharing of music for slumping sales of CDs ever since, but this view fails to take into account the overall poor state of the economy, the rise of rival entertainment sources like DVDs and games, the release of fewer CDs, the end of the vinyl-to-CD conversion, and simple consumer dissatisfaction with industry product. Some studies have even appeared to indicate file-sharing increases CD sales, but it's all open to interpretation and is probably close to an overall wash.)