Digital Music

Digital music has been changing and it will continue to change due to the improvement of technology. People are finding easier and cheaper ways to listen to music. Today’s people can do that through their computers, but what will it be like tomorrow?

Technological advancements occur rapidly that the year 200 seems long ago. An article published on May 15th 2000 entitled The Digital Music Future, states many new ways the music listener has “evolved”. The average person stared using available software and hardware to copy, store and listen to music. Given that most music files are in MP3 format, it was logical to invent MP3 players. The advantage of MP3 players and MP3 format flies in general is its storage capabilities. MP3 files are compressed and so many of them can be stored in one player to allow 600 minutes or 10 hours of solid music. That is very convenient in comparison to regular CDs that hold up to 60 minutes average. The only disadvantage of MP3 players is their high cost, therefore consumers prefer to burn CDs. Burning CDs is easy and somewhat efficient. Blank CDs are cheap and can be disposable. Minimal software is needed to burn CDs; all that is needed is the drive.

In the year 2000 there was a prediction that MP3 CD players will take over the market, which was a good prediction at the time. There have been studies thought on what is happening to CD players, how much people are using them and what people plan to do in the future. There has been a drop in the compact disk sales because the Internet music file sharing has been gaining power to diminish CD. There has been a nine percent drop of sales of CD, which caused record shops to close.

A study of 4,782 adults, and 1,170 young people, about twenty percent of all Americans use the Internet to download music. Half of the people who download music said that are buying fewer CDs. There is a prediction that in five years CD sales will drop thirty percent. Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester said, “CDs, DVDs, and any other forms of physical media will become obsolete.” ¹The only way the industry can be helped is by lawsuits against the file sharing. In the survey two, out of three young people said that they would refrain from downloading if there is a risk of jail or fine. If the trend of downloading continues then in three years the sales of digital music could account for $1.4 billion of the music industry’s $12.8 billion in expected revenue.

There are other predictions that by the year 2007 the video rental revenues will drop thirty-seven percent. “Consumers have spoken—they are tired of paying the high cost of CDs and DVDs and prefer more flexible forms of on-demand medial delivery,” Bernoff said.

Another study has been done in Sweden to look at the future of digital music. This study was done with people fifteen years of age and older. Thirty two percent of the Swedish population (in 2000), which is about 1.4 million people, downloads music. The reason they download music is because it is cheaper and because there are those who want to listen to the music before they buy it. About seventy-six of the people said it was cheaper and about seventy five said they wanted to listen to it before they buy it. There are already thirteen percent who are storing their music on portable devices to listen to it while traveling. People are already showing interest in changing their music buying habits. The study showed that three out of five people want to start downloading individual tracks and creating their own collection on PC.

As for the use of CD’s fifty percent of people between ages 18-24 want to stop buying CD’s in the next five years. This is due to the fact that most people don’t want to tolerate jumping or skipping due to scratches. There are a copious number of people who are using the technologies and there are more who are re-evaluating their future plans for their audio use.

“Of all the possibilities for delivering entertainment to mobile devices, downloading music to mobile phones seems at least an idea worth considering, right?” In the year 2001 there were 700 million mobile phones in the work and downloading music was and is one of the most popular activities. Seventeen percent of college students who use mobile devices are willing to pay $20 extra a month for music on their mobile, while twenty-six said that they would not. “The future ofmusic is wireless—but it’s not here yet.” Said MP3.com’s CEO, Michael Robertson²

• CDs May Go
• Wireless Music
• Music Future
• Future in Windows
• Sweden Look to Future