The Low-down on Downloading Music Part 1

By: Robert O Connor
Many PC users know that a computer can be a music-lovers dream toy. It is relatively easy to download and listen to the latest releases and organise playlists using a standard desktop machine. The music industrys relationship with the Internet and the use of digital music formats has been the subject of a lot of press coverage in recent times. Various conflicting viewpoints have been presented from those claiming that the Internet is the source of all the music industrys woes, to those who claim that the large labels are stifling competition and ignoring consumer demands for accessible legitimate services. In this article, I briefly discuss the music industrys position, followed by an outline of some of the legally endorsed services available and an overview of the file-sharing networks.
If record label executives are to be believed, the music industry is currently in crisis. The number of CDs sold annually has been in steady decline in recent years, with CD single sales dropping off most dramatically. The industry blames Internet piracy for most of these problems and is taking many steps to combat the illegal trading of music over file-sharing networks. The most common file format used by traders is the MP3 format, which was the subject of a previous article in this column (See /articles
/archive/2002/20020710-1.htm).
It is important to note that copying music that hasnt been paid for is illegal, although many people do not seem to think it is morally wrong. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), see http://www.riaa.org, has recently brought legal action against people it believed to be illegally trading files over the Internet. Strangely enough, these included a 12 year-old girl and a 65 year-old grandmother who didn’t even own a PC!
In the past few months, some legitimate downloading services have emerged. Although most of these services are only currently available in the U.S., there are plans to launch European versions in the near future. Probably the most successful of the current crop is Apple’s iTunes store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/). Apple launched this service in May of this year with exceptional results. In its first 18 hours of operation, 275,000 tracks were downloaded. At US$0.99 a go, that’s a sizeable amount of cash! Considering this service was only available to Mac users (who make up a very small portion of computer users) this is amazing. Apple’s success is largely due to the fact that they had many of the major labels catalogues available for download.
Previous attempts by legitimate services were hampered by limited availability of songs. In October of this year, Apple launched a Windows version of the service. Again, this is currently only available to US consumers, but a European version is due soon. Spurred on by Apple’s success, many other computing heavyweights are attempting to get in on the music act, with Microsoft and Amazon launching their music services later this year and Dell announcing that they have plans to deploy a media service in the next few months. Other legitimate services such as BuyMusic.com have also had some degree of success.
All of these services are very attractive but they all suffer one from major problem the free (and illegal) file-sharing networks got there first. Probably the most famous of all of these is the notorious Napster, which first brought the Internet as a distribution tool to the attention of music industry. Napster worked in a co-operative fashion by allowing users to share their MP3s with one another. It is estimated that in its haydays between 1999 and 2001, hundreds of thousands of tracks were being traded each day between users. The RIAA were successful in shutting Napster down, due to the fact that Napster’s network relied on central servers to link users together.
However, the next generation of file-trading tools did not require any central points of contact to communicate with users. Kazaa, Gnutella and Morpheus are all examples of what are known as peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in which client applications talk directly to one another, without the need for central servers. These have proven to be a nightmare for the RIAA and the music industry as the only way these networks can conceivably be shut down is if the client programs are deleted from every machine in the world. As can be imagined, this is unlikely to happen. (Ironically enough, a new legitimate service has recently been launched using the Napster name! It remains to be seen whether it attract as many users.)
So there you have it – the low-down on downloading music. In a follow-up article next week I offer my own viewpoint on the subject and how I believe the music industry should progress in the future If anyone would like to read more on the subject, it is a topic I regularly follow on my weblog at http://www.jbwan.com/roblog.