enRoute


	ENROUTE TV ENROUTE FM MEDIA KIT AIR CANADA LINKS WRITERS' GUIDELINES

HEAR, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

Portable, intuitive and nearly infinite: Everywhere Internet Audio is the next innovation in music delivery.

Text: DON TAPSCOTT

SEP '04

For many people I know, the gee-whiz feeling of buying an iPod that can store 10,000 tunes is quickly replaced by the "geez, what a hassle" feeling of having to be a full-time disc jockey. Choosing, sorting, cataloguing and arranging that much music quickly becomes a nuisance. The genius of the iPod is that it allows you to listen to the music you love wherever you are. But what most consumers really want (though they don’t know it yet) is what I call Everywhere Internet Audio – the next logical step in the music industry’s evolution.

In a few short years, most of us will carry a wireless Internet all-purpose gadget wherever we go – a unified BlackBerry/cellphone/ PDA/video camera/video recorder/GPS locator/co-pilot for life. Already, MP3 players have cameras and voice recorders built in, while PDAs make phone calls and take pictures.

Each month, these devices get smaller, more useful and cheaper. Soon almost all of them will have an always-on wireless Internet connection. Five years ago, the prognosticators thought this would be done via cellphone technology, but it’s now clear that wireless broadband networks, such as Wi-Fi hotspots, will blanket urban areas and be the dominant type of connection.

Once your digital multipurpose gadget is constantly connected to the Internet, downloading and managing thousands of songs on a tiny hard drive quickly loses its appeal. For a small fee, companies will provide services that enable you to happily retrieve any tune you want, any time, and stream it to a portable device or home stereo. So why bother owning? The services will manage the thousands of gigabytes of music available much more effectively than any person could do alone.

Listeners would have far more options than simply requesting a song by artist or title. For example, you could ask your wireless Internet gadget for all the 1960s rock ’n’ roll tunes that spent more than three weeks in Billboard’s Top 10 or for early 1990s guitarists that sound like Jimi Hendrix. You could tell your service what mood you want the music to create at your dinner party. Over time, your music provider could even recommend different artists you might enjoy once it has become familiar with your musical tastes.

The appeal for such services will be strong because our appetite for music is almost insatiable. In our fast-paced society, we seem to have less time for activities we enjoy, with music being the big exception. It makes good times better, particularly for younger music fans used to boom boxes and MP3 players. Music also makes bad experiences such as traffic jams more tolerable.

Everywhere Internet Audio is a compelling business model, and as the owner of the content, the record companies should be at the vanguard of designing the system. They have an advantage over fly-by-night pirate operations because a sophisticated central computer system would be required to individually service the millions of customers – something the illegal peer-to-peer systems can’t provide.

The recording industry has to understand that its traditional business model is being turned on its head. This is good. It’s a bloated industry with many intermediaries, such as distributors and promoters, looking to take their cut. To "create" popular bands is hugely expensive, but that’s what companies have to do to be given coveted shelf space at the record store. The upshot is that recording companies are constantly on the hunt for superstars since less than 10 percent of CDs released actually make a profit. Revenues generated by the bestsellers cover the losses incurred by everyone else.

It’s as if the game of baseball only counted home runs. Anything less is considered a strikeout, so if you don’t look like a home run hitter, you don’t get to play. In this context, the Internet should be seen for the godsend it is. It can distribute a digital copy of a song to hundreds of millions of listeners at virtually no cost. By sidestepping the industrial-age infrastructure, many more musicians can make a decent living. Suddenly, hitting singles and doubles becomes a money-maker. Even a musician that only bunts could do well. Record companies will have to nurture many small artists rather than focus all their energies on potential superstars. Our culture will be much better served by this approach.

File-sharing networks like Kazaa won’t disappear, and there will still be people who enjoy searching, downloading and organizing Frank Sinatra songs. So it’s good that the record companies now offer legal downloading alternatives. But the labels are so late in the game that it will be tough to wean 70 million downloaders from Kazaa with something that is only marginally better. The record labels need the superior service of Everywhere Internet Audio to win back paying customers. [ ]

ADD YOUR COMMENTS > dtapscott@enroutemag.net

SEP '04