MixedContent

I’ve enjoyed the posts over the last few weeks posts announcing the demise of the CD business (something I agree will happen sooner then later), but I got to thinking,”What’s next?”…

Sales for online music stores continue to climb sharply, and DRM free marketplaces like eMusic are gaining support. But still, commercial offerings are a just a small part of the overall pile in digital music downloads. Bittorrent and other P2P technologies are still king. I guess it’s hard to compete with a price point of zero, coupled with the largest digital library ever created… The fact that in 2006 around 60 million Americans (a number often cited in news stories; no link to an official survey or study though) ‘broke the law’ by downloading music illegally leads me to believe that at some point, compulsory licensing schemes will have to be implemented. There’s been much talk on this idea, but one thing that I haven’t seen explored in much depth is the consequences of a compulsory license scheme on the growing ‘legitimate’ (ie. commercial) digital music download services.

What would a compulsory license do to the iTunes business model. Or that of eMusic? Would bittorrent and other p2p networks gain even more prominence?

Here’s what I think would happen:

• New music services will blossom, focusing on interface, ease of use and features like recommendations and music sharing.
• Existing pay per download services (like iTunes) will struggle, but ultimately still have a place by focusing on the above points.
• The celestial juke box will become be a reality

It’s a bit old but I found this great post from Cory Doctorow that examines how a compulsory license for P2P music sharing could work and talks a bit about how iTunes would fare in such a world. As iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic and others continue to expand, they will undoubtedly be against such changes though.

Here’s a breakdown of the winners and losers in a post compulsory license world.

• The winners
• You, me, and all our friends
• The Songbrird music player
• Artists

• The losers
• labels (They’ll actually be winners in the end, but they’ll feel like losers for having to give up control)
• iTunes
• rhapsody
• eMusic
• etc.