[Repubcracy]

Everyone knows about the efforts that government have been trying to crack down on music piracy. These are several pirated music download sites.

http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm Kazaa
http://www.gnutella.com/news/4210 Gnutella
http://www.winmx.com/ WinMX
http://www.morpheus.com/ Morpheus

These are applications that allow P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing. This is different from the most widely known Napster file-sharing application, because of the way its structured. Napster is a P2S2P application.(peer-to-server-to-peer) So, if you shut down the server (which they did) then you destroy the file sharing, Unlike the P2P servers, which cannot be stopped if the server is shut down.

Anyway, with files being shared this easily, what is to become of our music? Will record companies find some new way to thrive? I have a prediction...

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/

This is iTunes, a mac based program. It is a music player, but with a built-in music store. You can download songs for 99 cents a pop, and albums for 10 bucks.

The company gets artists to let them put music on their site, and the artists get royalties for each song downloaded.

I have a predction that all record companies will fade out and become music download companies. What do you think?

[Goranhammer]

Doubtful.

MP3 players will have to become much more cost-efficient if that were to happen. Right now, you can get a Sony Discman around here for 40-50 bucks. MP3 players are significantly higher. Therefore, the old way is better...as of now. Five years from now, who knows.