Music Sites Ask, 'Why Buy If You Can Rent?'
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Virgin is the first major music retailer to enter the download market in introducing a music store to sell music as streams of bits to be downloaded from the Internet.
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DENVER (Billboard) - There is a reason people still buy CDs  more than they do digital albums. Actually there are several,  but viruses that come along with music via peer-to-peer sites  (P2P) and a concern over digital rights management (DRM) aren't  the only culprits.
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MySpaceÂs online music store will allow bands and labels of any size to sell songs for whatever price they want.
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The store chain will launch a Web DVD rental service like Netflix -- only cheaper. Also: American troops get access to Napster & hellip;. Microsoft offers XP lite in Asia to recapture business lost to Linux, piracy & hellip;. and more.
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Radio broadcasters are considering  technology and business models that may soon allow listeners to  click, listen and buy the tunes they hear on their favorite  radio stations.
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Should prices for blank media and recording products include a royalty fee to copyright holders for presumed losses to piracy?
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DENVER (Billboard) - Music fans have been slow to buy music  on their mobile phones. So several companies have responded  with services that let users access from their phones music  that is stored on their computers.
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Buying music used to be simple: You coughed up $14 or so for a CD, and as long as you didn&#39;t bootleg it or charge crowds of people to listen to it, the music was yours.
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A report into the habits of iPod owners reveals they prefer free music to tracks they have to pay for.
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Napster was a revolutionary product. It practically gave birth to the p2p industry on the Internet. It has lead to a stage that big corporations of the music industry are practically scared of losing a major chunk of their business from this phenomenon.
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Readers sound off on the joys of sticking to the formula, the history of digital music, and who needs saving. Plus: Links to our most commented blog posts.
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Radioheadâs âIn Rainbows,â which was previously available for free online, is on sale in record shops on Tuesday. Will anyone buy the CD?
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The flood of music online is a lot to wade through, but websites that "taste match" can point you to new artists by tracking what you like. By Scott Gilbertson.
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DENVER (Billboard) - Music fans have been slow to buy music on their mobile phones. So several companies have responded with services that let users access from their phones music that is stored on their computers.
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More college campuses are adopting deeply discounted - and legal - digital music as the latest amenity for students. Several top schools began offering these services in September, either free or highly subsidized.
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Revisiting the best online music store for indie fans.
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At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, it&#39;s clear that consumers are making choices that are driving industry changes, and nowhere is that more evident than in the digital music business.Music industry and technology executives convened for the Billboard Digital Music Live conference Wednesday to talk about what those in the business need to do to meet the needs of music fans who appear to be running the show.&quot;2008 has to be the year we get real or the business as we know it goes away,&quot; said Fred Goldring, an entertainment attorney with Goldring Hertz &amp; Lichtenstein. He said that consumers will access music regardless of whether artists, labels, publishers, and digital music distributors approve of the means or receive money from the exchange.Since Napster turned the music industry on its ear in 2000, the digital-music business has been rocked by dissent among artists, labels, publishers, and the breed of technology companies distributing and selling music online that emerged in Napster&#39;s wake. All of these parties want to derive revenue from their contribution to the business, but have been arguing for years about how everyone should get paid.As this drama unfolds behind the scenes, consumers continue to find ways to bypass DRM and emerging revenue models to download and share music, making it not just impossible for the music industry to make money from traditional means, but also difficult to make money at all. In the meantime, artists have embarked on their own revolution, using social-networking sites and other online means to get their music directly in the hands of fans and finding other ways to derive revenue from their work.An example of the latter is the controversial and much-publicized move by U.K. rock band Radiohead to sell its new album &quot;In Rainbows&quot; direct to consumers without going through its record label or Apple&#39;s iTunes Store. The album first went on sale in October on Radiohead&#39;s Web site, allowing users to choose their price for the record; a few weeks ago, Radiohead released the record to iTunes and other retail channels.Scenarios like this will continue to happen, both among major-label artists and independent or unsigned artists. Whether they work is not the point; it&#39;s what the industry will do to work within these models and support them rather than continue to resist that will decide how the industry will fare in the future, said Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group. Nettwerk is a Canadian privately owned record label and artist management company.&quot;The corporate side of it has to shift,&quot; he said. &quot;The corporate people have not allowed us to do what we know we have to do. This is about the consumer, about monetizing their behavior and giving them choice. For all of the people that believe in controlling the&#160;[intellectual property]&#160;and how [the music] gets to consumers, the game is over. It was over seven or eight years ago, and soon your business will be over.&quot;Goldring suggested the industry focus on business models built solely around the networks that allow users to download music and find ways for everyone involved to make money that way.&quot;We have to stop trying to keep our old business alive&#160;... and figure out how to monetize the pipes [music files] are going through,&quot; he said.Barney Wragg, head of digital, EMI Music Group, said that in a perfect world, scenarios like the ones McBride and Goldring propose would exist. However, the needs of different artists vary, and there are still concerns about the integrity of their work and how they will be compensated for it as new business models emerge.&quot;I have artists that don&#39;t want to be involved in certain business models,&quot; he said. &quot;I have to balance those conflicts. ... There are a whole bunch of artists who are worried about how they&#39;re going to get paid, and what this is going to do about their representation or their art.&quot;Allowing their music to be distributed through ad-supported online music services is a particularly hard sell for artists who worry that having their work be associated with advertising &quot;devalues&quot; it, Wragg added.Subscription-based models such as Rhapsody that don&#39;t give users ownership of their music have struggled to take off. Wragg compared music fans&#39; view of subscription models to the early days of e-mail, when people wanted files to be stored locally and were adverse to the concept of e-mail existing only on a remote server.That concept changed over time, as will the perception of subscriptions if they are marketed to consumers in the right way, he said.Another factor that should boost the popularity of subscriptions in the future is the increased spending of younger fans who are naturally more comfortable with the idea of not owning their music, said Matthew DeFilippis, vice president of new media and technology for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a membership organization representing the rights of artists.&quot;Ownership is a generational thing,&quot; he said. &quot;Even though kids today are buying from iTunes, I don&#39;t think they care about owning a thing. As they become the new generation of homeowners and bill payers, [music subscription] will be moving toward a cable [TV] model.&quot;