Online Music and You
Vol 1 - No. 4

Online Music

No doubt you’ve heard about online music. Whether it’s a news story about children sued by record companies, business deals with Internet and record companies, or just the jukebox icon on the Desktop of your new computer – online music touches nearly everyone who uses a computer.

There are plenty of ways to obtain music online legally, right to your computer. Record companies would have you believe that this is the best way to support your favorite artists while getting your music your way. But an article by Steven Cherry in IEEE Spectrum magazine (December 2004) offers some surprising figures. You can read the article, “Selling Music for a Song”, here

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/dec04/1204webs.html .

According to the article, artists who are under contract to a major record label earn only between 3 to 5 cents for each track sold at around 99 cents each. This is about the same royalty as from sales of CD’s.

Should you bite on an online music service? Maybe, or maybe not. Consider the pros and cons as you make your decision.

Online music services start with a client program on your PC that communicates with their Internet servers that provide you access to a database of digitized music. They provide a number of channels of streamed music (that work like radio stations), as well as the ability to play and purchase songs on demand.

PROS:

Online Music is Cool
A couple of mouse clicks and you have your favorite genre of music right on your computer. That’s wonderful if you spend a lot of time at the computer or if you work somewhere where traditional radios won’t work.
Basic services are usually free, albeit with advertising or upgrade offers strewn in. More advanced services like playing songs on-demand can cost more than $100 a year. Charges for “upgrades” can add $50 or more to the cost.

Online Music Gives you Choices
Want to listen to the “Hampster Dance”, or “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”? Or my old favorite, “I’ve Got A Rose Between My Toes From Walking Barefoot Through the Hothouse To You, Pretty Baby”? If so, online services are just the ticket. You can obtain just about any song you want to play, without having to go to a record store. If you have eclectic tastes in music, you’re in luck.

Online services let you create your own CD’s if you have a CD writer on your computer. You can make up your own CD’s with liner notes and cover art. You can include all the music you want and none of the songs you don’t.

Online Music is Convenient
Ever get a song in your head that you just can’t place? Online music players let you search by track, album, or artist name. You can find songs and listen immediately. This can be wonderful if you happen to love all kinds of music.

CONS:

Digital Music Eats Up Your Computer Resources
Digital music players can use 30 to 40 megabytes of space on your hard disk, and gigabytes more to store the music files you’ve bought. A large music collection demands a very large disk. If you like to listen to high-quality streaming music, you must provide a broadband (cable, LAN, or DSL) Internet connection. If you want to listen at work, your company policy might stop you.

Copy Protection and File Formats Can Lock You Out
In the good old days of phonograph records, and the early days of CDs, you could be sure that music you bought would play at home. Technical standards for phonograph recordings made sure of it. If you can find a record made in the middle 1960’s, look on the liner for some words about the “RIAA curve” – the standardized way of cutting grooves in the vinyl so every record worked on every player.

That’s no longer true with digital music. There are different formats for digital music and incompatible systems of copy protection, or digital rights management (DRM), as it’s called. DRM systems limit the number of times you can burn a track onto CD, as well as limiting the number of computers and the kinds of players that can play your music. That hot CD mix you burned for your vacation might not play on your car’s stereo. And it might not play on your computer after you replace your CD drive.

When VCR’s first appeared on the scene in the 1980’s, there was a battle in the marketplace between Betamax and VHS tape formats. Eventually, the VHS format became overwhelmingly popular and Betamax players were no longer sold. If you had any ‘Beta’ format tapes, eventually you couldn’t play them anymore. Years from now, the same thing might happen to digital music. Today’s digital music files might be as useless as your old Beta video tapes.

What you Hear Isn’t Always What You Get
Sometimes online music services sell tracks that are different from the tracks they play on their streaming channels. They won’t swap a Britney Spears song for an OutKast track, but they might change the mix of instruments, change the playing time slightly, or make subtle alterations. The downloaded version of an album might be different from the same CD you would buy in a store.

Online Music is AS-IS WHERE-IS
When you buy music online, don’t be surprised if the seller’s responsibility ends after you download the track. If you need to replace a lost or corrupted track, you probably have to pay for it again. If your computer doesn’t play the music well, if you can’t access the music servers, or your Internet connection gives you choppy streaming, the service probably won’t refund any money you paid.

Please note: Any trademarks and trade names of others mentioned in this message are the property of their owners, and not Stoney Hill Associates, LLC. We respect the intellectual property of others. The information provided is believed to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee that the procedures and information given here will work correctly for your specific situation.

If you would like help with a computer or software problem you face, contact us. Send an email to request@stoneyhillassociates.com.

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