Digital Music To Send CDs To 8-Track-and-LP Heaven?
Digital music distribution will send the CD to the audio
graveyard, alongside such former stalwarts as the vinyl record and the
eight-track tape, within the next two years.
So says Rob Reid, CEO of Listen.com, who delivered a keynote address
at the Upside Events "Showcase" conference, at the La Quinta Resort just
outside Palm Springs, Calif. Showcase is designed to demonstrate the
latest technologies, products and services in the Internet, personal
computing
and communications industries.
"By 2003," Reid said, "downloaded music will clobber the CD and the
distribution
method will become irrelevant. People will move from an 'a la
carte' system of buying music to a 'buffet' where they get all the music
in the world."
Reid was preceded onstage by Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3.com, who declared that his company wants to achieve "dominance"
in the digital music space in the manner of Microsoft's hold on operating
systems
and Internet browsers.
Robertson discussed MP3.com's InterOperating System (IOS), which works
with a soon-to-be-available device from Panja to convert a consumer's home
stereo into a virtual Internet device. He also referred to a deal his
company has
in place with the Tower Records retail chain, which allows customers to
buy
a CD in an offline store and instantly receive the music in his or her
MP3.com
online account. The same deal allows users to hear CDs ordered online
prior
to their arrival by mail, in streaming versions.
Robertson said he expects these and other deals will put his company at
the
center of the future of audio distribution.
"Panja only works with MP3.com. Tower only works with MP3.com. The better
job we do on marketing, the closer we will get to dominance, which is our
goal," he
said. "We hope that people will go into a store and ask if a device works
with
MP3.com before they buy it."
Reid countered by saying that many companies are trying to be "the
company,"
not just MP3.com. He predicts that six or seven companies will share the
market in the intermediate future.
According to Reid, five factors determine the popularity of a music
platform - fidelity, capacity, portability, "record-ability" and
selection.
As vinyl records evolved from 78 rpm to 45 rpm to 33 rpm, fidelity and
capacity improved greatly, changing the way music was recorded, he said.
The eight-track added portability, and the cassette offered the ability to
make home recordings.
"Many think of the eight-track as a tacky symbol of the 1970s, but it was
very
revolutionary in its time because it put music in people's cars," Reid
said.
"The cassette was a big step forward, because it was portable and
recordable,
meaning people could transfer their vinyl record collection to tapes and
take
it with them."
The advent of the CD killed the vinyl record, said Reid. And CDs were the
dominant storage format for most categories of downloadable just two years
ago. Now, Napster's file-sharing technology has given users access to
downloadable music that in some cases surpassed the selection available
on CD.
"Napster is a fascinating phenomenon," Reid said. "Napster the company may
disappear this year, as its fate is in the hands of the court. But Napster
the concept or the product will survive. It is a leading indicator of how
ready the public is to download music."
Napster users downloaded 1.75 billion songs in the month of November,
said Reid. If that rate continued for 12 months, it would add up to
approximately
21 billion songs or 1.45 billion CDs. In contrast, just under 1 billion
CDs
were sold last year in the retail market in the United States. "That is
one
newcomer outdistancing a system decades in the making. This is possibly
the
fastest adoption in the history of technology," Reid remarked.
In the long term, Reid believes storage is the key. He pointed out that
the
price for a gigabyte of storage has dropped 200 percent recently, and is
now
about $5 per gigabyte. "Right now, the state of the art is a personal
jukebox
with a 6-gigabyte hard drive. In 2011, the personal giga-jukebox will be
available
that will hold 11,250 gigabytes, or all the music available in the world,"
he said.
The key in an environment of "infinite access" will be navigation, he
said.
"Distribution will not matter, collection management will be important.
People
will need help navigating millions of uncategorized songs. That is the
big problem."
The Showcase conference concludes Wednesday.
More information on the Showcase event is available on the Web
at http://www.upsideevents.com/showcase.