The Future of Music

Lizz Fransen

With the growing popularity of Mp3's the future of music is certain to change. With the introduction of the Mp3 file format, illegal copies of music have flooded the internet, in a variety of places. New products now on the market make it easier to find and distribute illegal copies of music. The future for copyright laws regarding music is now even more uncertain and the mp3 file format is a partly to blame for it.

Mp3.com's idea was to give independent bands a bigger chance to get noticed by providing them with a service that allowed them to put some of their songs on the internet in high-quality but small files. The band gives their permission for a few of their songs to be distributed and in return gets free advertising. People will then discover their sound and flock to music stores to purchase their cd's and the band gets rich. The only problem is that instead the MP3 file format has changed music forever.

Soon after the introduction of MP3 playing software, came the pirated versions of music available despite the copyrights placed on the music. You can find mp3 files of the latest music in a number of places, through IRC and Napster as well as on many sites full of music. Sites containing illegal forms of music are deleted as soon as they are found, but with so many people willing to "help" their fellow music lovers get free copies of their favorite songs, there are always plenty that haven't been removed. With Napster and IRC the files cannot simply be deleted since they are on personal computers and other internet users only have access to the files when the other person is also connected to the community.

As well as the rise of popularity of MP3's not surprisingly comes the fact that cd burners (or writers) have also increased in popularity. With the availability of software that enables you to convert from wav format (a format cd players read) to mp3 format, wav files that you have converted from mp3 format can be burned onto a cd relatively easily. A CD-R (cd writable disc that can only be written to once) costs about $2.50; the software can be found as free or shareware on the internet or can be purchased; and a cd burner costs between $200 and $600 with the prices dropping each day. This translates into a relatively inexpensive way to get music to listen to in you cd player.

A regular CD-R holds around 74 minutes of music or 650 megabytes of information. On this can be placed approximately 18 songs. Anyone making a cd would only put music they enjoy listening to on it, making it 18 worthwhile songs. On a purchased cd there are usually between 12 and 15 songs, usually including at least 2 that the owner rarely listens to and just skips by them, making it at most between 10 and 13 worthwhile songs. This makes a self-mixed cd more cost efficient than buying a cd from a music company. One on-line music site, Cd Now sells self-mixed cd's: you select the songs that you want on your cd and then pay a set price. There are certain restrictions though and they do not have the most current songs because of the legal work it takes between the site and the musician.

Another new technology to emerge in stores is the Mp3 personal stereo. This device plays mp3 files off a minidisc like a walkman plays cassettes. The stereo is incredibly small, seeing as the mini disc has only a 2.5" circumference and won't skip like a cd player. You place the music you want onto the minidisc, using a link to your computer. If music companies began producing preformatted minidisc,s this technology could replace cds, making it even easier for piracy to occur, since the need to change the format of the file would no longer be a complication.

Future versions of cds could include an encryption, so that only unencrypted music could be transferred into mp3 format. This idea was used when DVD players first became available. The DVD encryption was hacked after the motion picture industry spent years ensuring that it would be safe to distribute digital movies without having to worry about people being able to copy them easily. The same thing will inevitably happen if the music industry attempts to use this as a fix to the mp3 dilemma. As well, it will cause problems because all cd players being manufactured would need to include the way to decrypt the cd, ultimately ending up with older cd players being unable to play the new cds.

Another possibility for the future is that the selling of cds will cease to be the most lucrative part of being a musician. Instead, live performances, radio stations broadcasting the band's music, and television appearances will be the typical ways musicians wil accumulate wealth. Cds will continue to be produced and sold, but the copyrights will change so that duplicating music is not prohibited. Official web-sites of musicians will contain versions of their music in mp3 format to encourage the spread of their popularity. One problem with this plan is that people without access to the internet will be at a disadvantage for getting free new music.

Mp3's have the potential to change the way music is distributed in the future, whether or not it helps to change copyright laws or just increase the security features of cds. This is due to the ease of reproducing copywritten music with file converting software, cd burners, and mp3 personal stereos. Whatever the future holds for the music industry, mp3 files are sure to be part of it.