Downloadable Music Coming of Age

The New York Times ran a story this morning, titled "Music At Your Fingertips," discussing how online music distribution -- legitimized by Apple's iTunes Music Store -- is changing the business models of the record companies. Says the Times, "music labels and retailers [will] compete more aggressively online, offer[ing] more obscure titles and recordings of live performances that could find a paying audience through downloads but make no financial sense to distribute on CD's." As one who has been ripping CDs for five years now, this is a very welcome development, but it remains true that if "You've got a portable music player that can fit 10,000 songs on it . . . [n]o one will spend $1 a track filling it.'' Well, maybe if they chart this course the labels won't become extinct after all.

 Posted by glenn