Mark Cuban predicts the coming death of the CD (The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin). Well, of course. The CD is ultimately doomed as a format. However, I don't see anything to replace it that is supported by the major labels. Until the labels provide a format that is not locked into a particular vendor, is future-proofed and provides the security of purchase of physical ownership, the CD will remain relatively strong. In any case, what Cuban gets wrong is not that the CD will eventually die, but that music kiosks will replace it in retail outlets.
Kiosks are dead before they've even really got started.
Why go to a physical location to download music? Does it really make sense to go to Walmart with your MP3 player to download music? Such services would be better off if you could download wherever there is wireless access. Wireless should be integrated with your MP3 player.
What this will enable is the ability to download music wherever and whenever you can be encouraged to buy, generally when you are actually listening to music. "Hey, I like that song. I want it." This is why concert sales of music make a lot of sense.
But, as for retailers ... Hear a song that you like in Starbucks (excuse me, an independent coffee house)? It should be on the wireless ether in the shop, ready to be captured in your MP3 player. You hear a song you like, you press a button on your MP3 player and the song is automatically downloaded for you. Hear and save.
Is this good for music retailers? Nope. However, it is good for other retailers and anywhere people listen to music. If Starbucks (I mean, a non-Starbucks coffee house) plays an artist's music and people capture it in the store, perhaps there should be some sort of commission for Starbucks (you know what I mean). The cost of providing this service would certainly be much less than having a innumerable physical kiosks around (all the effort is on the backend, all the shop needs is wireless), and it would make impulse music grabbing much more convenient.
Of course, all this would work much smoother if there were some sort of voluntary blanket licensing.
Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
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