Changing models

I remember the days in school where one would share audio tapes. Back in the early 80's, having a two-player cassette deck was a big deal in India. Even then, the other big hurdle was that the TDK, Sony and BASF (cant remember name for sure) tapes cost a bomb. Then came Meltrack, with its real poor quality tapes that died out soon, still, we went about sharing music. Then with CDs and MP3 player profligating along with writeable CDs, we continued this rich tradition during the days we met up, for by now most of us were working and had little interaction with newer genres of music and had to rely on friends' tastes - even the artists and music companies should realize that!

But with the new lines of battle being as they are and the rigorous emergence of DRM and limited copying, probably there will be the emergence of satellite and live online radio with stream recorders that will continue to keep the generations kicking. I am against piracy where there is commercial gain. I am all for sharing music like we used to do. The debate will probably continue!

Meanwhile, the mode of music download too is of interest. Globally it would seem that more than 80% of all revenue would come from mobile downloads, versus only 20% of revenues from non-mobile downloads. I am not sure about the usage statistics though, given the prevalence of P2P networks on broadband, maybe there is scope for a mobile P2P network and song sharing, lets see if I can work on that with some friends based on this article here. But I never really know what happened with Airtel & Hutch launching their music services and becoming oh-so-quiet after that, though I do see Hutch still advertising something to do with music, its all too confusing!

But its not as if the content industry is sitting quiet. Hollywood biggies are eager to avoid making the mistake of losing their consumers to the tech giants like Apple. Which explains why Fox Movies is coming out with pay-per-download models where consumers can download movies from their sites in digital versions. Warner Bros has already embarked on this journey!