[discostu]

We'll see, I'm not buying that some massive revolution is coming. This thing looks to me like the new economy all over again. A lot of smoke and mirrors but in the end I think the record industry will remain basically the same. I have no problem with the RIAA going after copyright violators, I have problems with some of the changes in copyright law they push for, but at it's base I think the concept of copyright is good and deserves protection (from both sides).

IMHO the biggest change that will (and already is with iTunes) come out of this is the rebirth of the single. The CD boom really killed the single and the CD-single always sucked and nobody really likes them, but apparently the market never disappeared only the way to satisfy the market. iTunes seems to be the solution to that, The Stones seem to think so, you can criticize the Stones for a lot musically but never doubt their ability to make a buck.

[general_re]

Oh, sure, the record companies could take heed of the way the winds are shifting and adapt to the changing circumstances, but so far they haven't really betrayed the sort of intelligence that this would imply. So instead, the record companies might rediscover the fact that intellectual property is an entirely artifical notion, that only exists because society agrees that it should exist, and exists in whatever form society says it should exist - and if they continue the way they have been, eventually nobody in the audience will believe in the concept of copyrighted music at all. And then it will stop existing. But either way, I don't believe for a minute that this means the end of music.

Bye bye Mr. Industry Guy,
Drove my Napster to disaster but the CD's were fried,
And good old boys were thinkin' "freebies for I",
And singin' "this'll be the day that they die"...

With apologies to Don McLean... ;)

[WOSG]

Consider:

With MP3 format, you can put 10x the music on a CD-R disc.
Each CD-R (writeonce) disk costs only 10 cents.
So ten albums in one disk. 100 albums on $1 of discs.

I put my entire classical music inventory of scads of CDs into 6 CD-Rs. And on my computer. far more convenient than lugging all the original CDs around.

Once they make a DVD format for music (or just put mp3s onto a DVD disc?) you are talking huge amount of music on one format.

No change? How long can RIAA charge $15 for something that a kid can do 10 times as much of for 10 cents?