CDs and Digital Distribution

While music has been distributed on those ubiquitous silver plastic discs for as long as many of us can remember, we stand at a turning point in the music industry. With more and more people gaining access to the World Wide Web, the concept of direct digital distribution has been gaining more and more widespread acceptance. And although many companies are still invested heavily in the production of compact discs, and there are still some problems to be ironed out with the new format, we can all expect to be downloading our music in one form or another in the years to come.

The first online music stores were created in an attempt to stem the flow of bootleg, unauthorized music trading online. While these stores have had considerable success in recent years, the pricing structures and the Digital Rights Management technology used to control what the purchaser can do with the tracks have remained topics of concern among users. Nowadays, more than a few artists and labels have thrown in the virtual towel on the piracy front, and simply sell plain-vanilla mp3s with which the end user can do whatever he or she likes.

One of the advantages to this method is a vastly increased exposure. The more people that have access to a work, the more popular the artist can become. Coupled with reasonable pricing (the most recent Nine Inch Nails double album is being sold online for $5), many of those who would go out of their way to download the files illegally might instead choose to support the artist. More and more musicians are taking this approach, especially in that it allows them to bypass the normal hassles of labels, management, and physical distribution. The future of music, it seems, is on the web.