Thoughts on digital music distribution

The discussion we had in class during Charles presentation on last.fm was interesting. It made me think about the music industry, which we have also read about, and what they have done right and wrong so far.

Today the music industry is in front concerning the usage of technology and social media. I would however argue that the only reason they have been better than other industries is because of greed. But greed is good right...

Anyway, the music industry managed to shut down some early "dotcom" sites such as Napster and Kazaa (the latter I used myself). They also managed to put DMR protections on for example music sold via the iTunes Store. This successfully stopped people from sharing music for a while but is now removed. The long battle between pirates and labels has created many new interesting ways of listening to music. But what the music industry should have done was to work with technology instead of against it. But maybe in the end that is exactly what made it better today?

Today the digital music market and distribution is a lot better developed. But I don't credit the big music labels for that. None of the popular software we use today to buy music has been developed by the music industry, Instead small private companies such as last.fm and Spotify has created the possibilities (Itunes was of course a pioneer in this field but they need to change too). Without these companies I think the music industry still would have struggled.