A few years ago, digital music was mostly something that teenagers and techgeeks did illegally and inefficiently.
Today, with iTunes in the lead, with $4B of the $9B music market passing through their store, there are many viable business models that enable the average person to discover, enjoy, organize and share music.
It is not clear yet which model or how many models will survive, but it has never been a better time to be a music fan.
There are three key sources of new value: discovery, organizing, and sharing.
Discovery
We used to be limited in how we discovered music.
We would hear a great song on the radio, wait til the announcer named the artist and title, and then run to the record story to buy the 45, or if we were moved by the single and the album cover art, buy the LP.
Or a friend would play a great song for us, or tape it for us on a mix, or we'd hear a song at a club and ask a friend for the details.
We were limited by the radio stations in our area, the people we knew and the local venues for music.
And of course we were limited by the music labels themselves to the music they deemed commercial enough to justify an investment in vinyl and cardboard.
Today, you can listen to nearly any radio station in the world via internet.
You can follow blogs by music insiders and opinionated outsiders. And you take advantage of numerous discovery options online.
Organization
We have made great progress from shelves of LPs and boxes of cassettes, in alphabetical order, or ordered by genre, perhaps with the favorites stacked closest to the stereo.
New music services allow people to create playlists to suit different moods and usages–workout, romance, party mix etc. They also all the creation of folders of music by type, with songs appearing in multiple categories.
And of course, nearly any service has a search function that lets you find songs by lyrics, title, artist, or album among other things.
Sharing
Music has always be meant for sharing.
Now, digital music is taking advantage of the social networking boom in digital services. You can share playlists, see what music friends like on Pandora, even give away songs to your friends through iTunes. Letting friends know what music you like and giving them an opportunity to hear it is tremendously valuable to music lovers. People are putting music into their blogs, onto their websites and as background for the Facebook pages.
Friends can go beyond their car stereos and boom boxes to express their individuality through their musical tastes.
Many of the sites are still free, although the clear trend is to begin charging–after all, somehow the artists (and the labels) need to be compensated for the music they are creating and distributing. Pandora recently introduced PandoraOne, Spotify is charging for its premium service, Napster charges for its subscripton–bit by bet, people are getting acclimated to spending money for digital music, beyond the $.99 ($1.19) single that Apple has made the de facto standard.
So, if you haven't taken a look at the various digital music resources
online, now is the time. There is still opportunity to try most of them for free, and the subscription and usage rates are still quite low.
Here are a few of my favorites:
- Pandora–take advantage of their Pandora's Music Genome Project and let their algorithms find music structured like the songs you already know you love. Create your own radio station that you can play for free online or on your mobile device. It's free for the first 40 hours–and then you can upgrade to PandoraOne for just $36/year
- The Playlist Project–create playlists of songs you love, follow friends, celebrities and music pundits to discover new music all for free
- LastFM–an internet radio service that aims to provide you with music you want by noticing what you're already listening to
- iTunes–the 2 ton gorilla of online music–they couldn't make it any easier to buy the songs you want, download them and organize them.
Some people will stick with physical records and cassettes, others will store all their music in MP3 format, but the majority will move to use the many new tools that are now available for consuming music. Now is the time to try something new.
