The Future of Music: The Celestial Jukebox
By: Douglas Wolk
It's only a matter of time before we're able to access our entire music library through our mobile devices. Already we see sites such as Pandora, that are built for the purpose of helping users find other music they may be interested in. Whether the RIAA or artists want it to happen, it will.
What we need to do, in order to make everyone happy is try to come up with a way that musicians and artists can still be compensated for their work while users get complete access to what they want. Some sort of blanket fee should be charged to anyone who chooses to access an all encompassing music library. If the RIAA or those involved with the copyright issue don't act fast then they will be facing serious issues.
We are ready to move onto this idea of an all-in-one music world, and regardless of if the RIAA wants to move forward we will. If they take the first shots, they will have a much easier time making everyone pay the blanket fee. However, if they wait for the users to make the first move, it will be much harder for them to gain any income at all.
It's interesting that in such a short period of time we've moved from hand-held walkmans to ipods and now an all encompassing piece of technology that will once again drastically change how we find and listen to music.
