Essay3- Music Industry!!! where does it go?

Music industry has experienced a very bad situation in comparison to other media in recent years. By improving computer network technologies, music piracy has been very commonplace these days. Within young generations, illegal downloading is not a big deal or immoral issue; it is something normal. Having this situation, legislating stricter laws or advanced anti-piracy software lock of CDs and DVDs will not be the remedy. The industry should find another way to solve this problem. If we look at some trends in the digital world, we can find some answers that can be beneficial for us to apply in this case.

Broadband Internet:
If we focus on internet speed and draw a curve of its increasing within last decade, we can anticipate that in 5 five years most of the world will have access to broadband internet with speed of 10-100 Mb/s at least in western world (which is the primary market in our case). Having broadband everywhere i.e. wireless access will be something ordinary in near future. Everyday, we see new standards will rise and being developed in academic and industrial areas. Standards like Wi-Max, 3G, HIPERMAN, GAN, iBUSRT just to mention a few. Within a few years 4G (4th generation of networks) will be completed and then we will have a universal secure super fast network connectivity standard in all over the world.

Mobile Revolution:
Now, it is one decade that everyone is looking for mobile booming but we can say after emerging iPhone, this booming time is near. Most of mobile phones that are produced now are stronger than a 1980’s computer. Growing the market for the smartphones is around 30% annually and it is predicted that smartphones will own 30% market share of the whole mobile market until 2011. Your mobile phone will not be just a device to make calls; it is your gateway to whole the world. Gaming industry is focusing now on developing games just for mobile platforms; new applications are emerging everyday for every kind of services on iPhone platform, any kind of location-based services are being developed day by day; spreading 3G (3rd generation) mobile; new mobile handsets that ares a music player more than being a phone. Knowing this situation, it is better to forget any kind of disk (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) and finding new thing that suits the needs of the new digital world.

Social Media:
Post-modern human is searching his identity within his peers. Being very busy with your daily tasks, no time to see your friends; this causes you embracing your laptop as a friend even when you are at home after work. Emerging and spreading social networking websites like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, etc. is just some example of next generation behavior in virtual world. Concept of “Second Life” which is a very hot area of research in social networking is one of the signs to see the future of human being living in a virtual world.

Open Source Movement:
Now, it is the open source era. Everything is going to be open source, from media to software application, from academic researches to industrial researches, from political debates to military information. Everything is and should be free on the internet. It is one of the consequences of democracy and thinking democratically. The open source world is the utopia that human being has had looking for it since two thousands years ago. Living in such a world, no one expects that one industry want to restrict itself from being accessible. If any entity in this world wants to restrict itself, it will be condemned dooming.

Future of Music Industry?
Knowing these trends, proves that if music industry wants to be in line with the world, they should change their way of thinking. They should consider their long-term profit and ignore declining short-term revenues. Being always online, at home, at office, at street, at vacation, at beach, … no need to own a music. You just want to listen to it. If it is available for you whenever you want it, then no need to buy CDs, or downloading it (based on a lecture by Spotify representative). In my point of view (based on a lecture by Nordic Warner Bros. CEO) the era of any kind of disks is passed, the industry should think of new kind of sharing concept in music world. Even no need to buy a digital music online. If you could buy the rights for listening music online, then you will not download any music. No need to save a huge amount of data on your hard disk which is unsecure to damages. The musics are saved in powerful servers somewhere in the world and you just listen to whatever you want just by a little amount of subscription fee.

Another big trend in computer world is going back to 40 years ago. The next generation of computers will not be most powerful entities in the computer world, they will be just some interface devices that provide you whatever service you want by connecting to powerful servers that exist around the world. Hence, next generation computers do not have big hard disks or powerful CPUs, they are very simple mobile devices that offer you whatever you want. UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) and next generation Nano-tech based Nokia phones are just some examples to mention.
The bottom line is the music will be free within 5-8 years from now on. The business model will be based mainly on ad-funded contents; and user-funded little subscription fee. This means that no one owns a music track, just rights to listen to it because there is no need to own a music track. Everything will be online and based on mobile platforms and you can easily share your music with your friends but not for downloading; just as a recommendation for listening. Most of your friends have their own subscription (in a universal server like iTunes), so they will be able to listen to your recommended song just by clicking on your sent link.