Five Reasons Why Buying Music is Headed for the History Books

The collapse of the traditional music industry has been well documented.  The Virgin MegaStore just closed for good in Union Square and the Tower Records franchise that was once a vibrant hub for music is gone from the landscape.  The number of CDs sold is at an all-time low and I am willing to bet if you eliminated all sales of CDs to anyone over 30 the figures would be staggeringly low.

Sure, for the moment, there is still a brisk business in the sale of legal digital downloads.  iTunes and Amazon both seem to be making some reasonable coin on the practice.  Still, it is hard to imagine that this will last much longer.

Here are five reasons why buying music is headed for the history books:

1) The legacy of Napster – Napster, in its original incarnation, was our first taste of how easy, fun and beneficial it was to be able to share your entire music collection with other people all over the world and have the chance to share the music libraries of those very same folks.  Sure, the free aspect was cool, but the best part was the endless selection and immediate accessibility.  Napster taught us that music did not have to be locked down on physical formats or hidden behind DRM.

2) The Return of “Radio” – Sure, traditional, terrestrial radio may not be a threat to record sales, but the world of webcasters combined with the fact that all those traditional stations are available online means that there are an endless stream of free listening options that combine the ability to refine genres with the chance to discover new music.  From Pandora to Last.FM to the basic “radio” options embedded in iTunes, it’s easier than ever to simply tune in, sit back and enjoy.

3) The iPhone (and its brethren) – Nearly every major music webcaster now has an iPhone application that will stream content to you anywhere you can get a signal.  This is not limited to WiFi zones but most will deliver content of 3G and even Edge.  This means that unless you spend a lot of time underground (like I do in the NYC subways) you never have to disconnect from the flow.  Why cart around 10,000 songs when you can just press the Slacker icon and gain access to over 1,000,000 tunes.

4) Songza et. al. – For those not familiar with the site, Songza.com is a music search site that scours the web (mostly YouTube, actually) for recordings of any song or artist you enter into the search box.  This solves the, “I wanna hear the song right now” problem that you face with Pandora and the like.  Whether the major labels and RIAA like it, just about every song and artist I can come up with results in a successful search on Songza.  The point is, legal or otherwise, every song is out there somewhere already, making it tough to convince me why I should pay to buy it.

5) The Generation Gap – Try this: find any kid under the age of 15 and ask them what was the last album they bought.  Chances are, there is no last album.  In fact, studies in the UK have shown that kids are  buying less music online but they are not replacing that with some kind of piracy – they’re just not downloading music to “own” for free or for a fee.  What’s the point of buying music when it is already out there to be heard?

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