Streaming limits use of digital music files, giving labels control. Brad King writes in Wired:
- "Labels want to maintain as much control as humanly possible, and with streaming they can keep people coming back for more," said GartnerG2 analyst P.J. McNealy. "But the labels want to protect their content and generate revenues, so this means ultimately they want to keep selling CDs."
Record executives have been loath to support downloads because they feared the practice would eat into the $14 billion CD retail sales market.
Pressplay, FullAudio and MusicNet have been pushing for liberal download plans that allow consumers to grab any file they want, but with a catch: The downloaded files have an additional cost and come with restrictions that prevent unlimited mobility.
Meanwhile, companies like Listen.com and MusicMatch are attracting users by offering interactive streaming services. Labels more readily license content to such services because it's housed on private servers, making it more difficult to copy and distribute over peer-to-peer networks.
Even EMusic.com, which built its business selling downloads as a subscription service, is being forced to reconsider its business model after some users started downloading 2,000 tracks per month — roughly 165 albums — according to general manager Steve Grady.
This is music as a service rather than as a "thing."
Article comments
1 - Hazy Dave
Streaming is a pain and barely worth listening to if you're on a dialup connection. On a higher bandwidth connection, fidelity can be acceptable, especially if there aren't any damn "rebuffering" glitches.
Of course, once the data stream is out of the Record Company's clutches, how do they propose to ensure it doesn't get copied? I know there's a utility for the Macintosh that will save streaming audio to disk. If there isn't a Windows equivalent yet, I imagine people will get to work on it as soon as they can stream the music they want to hear at an attractive price.
Until then, well, we're still paying royalties to the RIAA on blank cassettes, right? (I wonder if there's an auditor somewhere that can tell us how much of that money has been distributed to the Artists? Ha!)
2 - Jim S
the quality of streamed music is inferior, due to software interaction and yes, it sucks badly on a dialup.
topping that off, there's the fact that you can only sit in front of your computer and listen. There is no portability.....