Nevertheless, is this really going to be much of a revolution? I’m no economist, but I think it will be very hard to tell until the specific royalty details are revealed. It certainly has potential, especially because they allow any independent artist with no record label to upload tracks as they please, competing directly with the major record labels (which makes me wonder if major labels will become even more useless; they must not think so if they all signed onto this).
Nonetheless, none of this is actually all that new. Streaming tracks are not high enough quality for many music fans, can’t be managed in their preferred software and can’t be burned to CD or synched to iPod. Because of that, downloading from peer to peer torrent sites is probably still a more complete and more convenient service, without factoring in the matter of ethics and even cost.
There is a lot of potential here, and I think it might well end up growing into a way for the music industry to stop its gnashing of teeth over Internet music piracy (free exchange of data) and perceived downturn in business as a result (of the opportunities they’re stubbornly missing). Before that happens, though, a lot of work is necessary.
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Because of that, downloading from peer to peer torrent sites is probably still a more complete and more convenient service...
Sorry to say but Bittorrent is a thing of the past. Most people usually pay for a premium account from Rapidshare & then hunt Google for all the Mp3's they want. The best thing is that now you can download ape & flac files of your favorite artists, so, Mp3s are really for the people who don't understand audio compression (Lossy vs. Lossless)
*Oops* I've said too much... Ciao!
2 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
*One more Thing* - Bittorrent is trackable & rapidshare/megaupload/etc. links are not