One thing is for sure when talking about the music industry: Everyone wants free music on his computer, phone or mp3 player. And since it’s very easy to obtain your music free (not legally) the music industry has to legalize the use of it by searching for other ways to make money from it.
With Qtrax launching today people will have immediate access to over 25M songs for free. That’s almost 10 times the whole iTunes collection and about 8 times the Amazon mp3 titles. But still, Qtrax does not provide the final solution. Qtrax is a p2p network where users can download music which can be played only on players that support Microsoft’s subscription DRM. It’s an ad supported music download service but at the same time it has some restrictions caused by not using a DRM-free format.
The ultimate solution for music would be totally free distribution. The labels should be able to monetize other activities like performances, movie licenses, sponsored events, etc. to a greater extent so that all of us could enjoy free, legally downloaded music.
And the question is: Music industry takes some actions now to be better. Is movie industry next to follow?
You write very well.