maybe.
But, the bigger story is no uptick in music sales.
This is interesting, not that it validates piracy. Not where I'm headed with that. It's all about breaking down the piracy = lost sale meme that impacts so much of our increasingly draconian IP law.
(a topic where President Obama and I strongly disagree)
This:
And were I an actual paid reporter, I might have dug into what I think is possibly the most interesting music-sharing story of 2011, which is that people aren't downloading music as much anymore, but they're sharing it more than ever. Streaming music, both legal and illegal, is finally taking off in a big-time way. People no longer feel as much need to have their own copy of an MP3 on their disks because they're confident they can be connected all the time to a network that will supply them the sounds they want when they want it. Between broadband penetration to homes and a proliferation of pocket devices (mostly calling themselves cell phones) that have the ability to stream low-bitrate MP3s or better, we are likely to see the local storage of media go the same way as email has gone in the past decade. And that will impact old markets like P2P networks far far more than yet another sharing company shut down by the Cartel.
...is something I find interesting.
Long ago, when mp3 first hit the scene, a good friend and I discussed listening to the tunes where they were, vs archiving them. At the time, I was strongly in the archive camp, just for fear over pay per play, and or simple lack of access / legal issues.
At the time, we both had fairly large libraries of tunes we had ripped from vinyl and CD online to listen to and share. We also would share with ssh tools, having directories and accounts on a few machines, where people could just drop stuff, or pick stuff up, largely avoiding the mess.
Anyway, just a interesting take, IMHO.
I still am not completely pleased with the idea of listening in the cloud, but a lot of people are. Google is exploring music on the cloud, trying to get cloud rights from the labels, so they can offer a variety of services to people, much like was tried early on.
That's intriguing to me now, where it was not before. Overall improvements in tech, and some time has passed. Worth a revisit, IMHO.
To think, had the majors actually granted Napster the same consideration, the money made would have been absolutely huge. What a missed opportunity!
