Wal*Mart Downloads

Maybe this is better for the music forum, but what will this trend mean for high end audio?

If the major lables start to move towards music downloaded formats, there will be less and less pressing cd's. Will the future of music include only low resolution downloadable formats, of can we expect even the lowely cd to continue.

personally, I thin SACD and DVDA are dead in the water. There is no market for these formats.

Judd

Wow. I only saw two songs in the top 50 that were worth 88 cents to me, personally. But I already bought the full cds of those two.

Something tells me I'm not in the target demographic for this service.

I think this explosion of of music downloading business plans comes at a time where the music industry feels that a whole generation of prospective users may be lost forever. The industry I think was slow in adopting and adapting to the seductive charms of P2P and other (free or almost free) music distribution systems and so tried to crush them by dint of legal action but when this failed they were rather slow in jumping on the technical bandwagon in an attempt to offer this lost generation of what they indeed wanted. This I think has fuled the rush of music download system appearing over the last few months. It looks like the idea of a turnkey system for distributing music (with price set for each seperate business model) has at last hit the streets with Microsoft providing the kit (DRM??). With administration of artists rights, the paying of the artists now wll controled by the MS supplied software then all the bugdding business person has to do is to decide what songs to licence and how much to pay for them.

The $64B question that needs to be answered is
Will this return the lost generation back to the stright and narrow and will they give up on their years of downloading music for free?

Service allows firms to start online music stores quickly,
Loudeye, Microsoft team on music store | CNET News.com & Loudeye Digital Media Solutions

Roy

Do you really think young people want to soend 88 cents on a song. The appeal to the young under the previous system was that it was free.

It continues to amaze me the sense of entitlement some young people have for access to free music.

Judd

No but Walmart, Itunes and others offering this service think that they will return. What value added product can the music business offer that will tempt people to pay for what they already get for free?

Roy

How far can they parse the artist's output? If I hear a song on the radio with a particularly catchy refrain or a hot guitar solo, think they'll sell me the desired 20 seconds' worth at an appropriately discounted price? If I'm making my own dub music, will I eventually be able to just buy a snippet?

"Last week's samples, 3 for a nickel!"

No idea but the Creative Commons movement & Wired News: Record Label Sings New Tune both attempt to address the point of using tunes from other and incoorporating them into your own work.

Roy