Word: files
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Jamie Partida is facing the music. Like many of her fellow music fans across the country, the University of Michigan senior visits the file-sharing website Kazaa and occasionally downloads a few songs free. The sports-management major, 21, knows it's wrong. "It's unfair to the artist because you're not paying for it," she admits. But the price of CDs is such that she never considered quitting. Until last week, that is, when hundreds of file-sharing consumers found themselves slammed with lawsuits from the recording industry. "Now I'm a bit scared," says Partida. "I know...
...others like her decide to go legit, that could signal the long-awaited dawn of a potentially huge industry: the sale of digital music online. A gaggle of companies has struggled for years to create such a market, hampered first by uncooperative record labels and then by free file-sharing alternatives. But change is coming fast. The overnight success of Apple's 99¢-per-song iTunes Music Store--it sold its 10 millionth song this month--has awakened consumers to legal downloading options. Iconic acts like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles have begun allowing their songs to be sold...
...Worse, record labels tripped up the progress toward a legal Internet music market by quibbling over rights and hoarding their artists. They spent hundreds of millions on their own online services, alienating consumers by forcing them to seek out artists by label. Luring back those disgruntled music lovers from file sharing is difficult but vital, says Doug Morris, chairman of Universal Music Group, which slashed CD prices this month. "If you had Coke coming out of the kitchen faucet," he says, "what would you pay for a bottle...
...song service last spring, many doubted the computer maker could succeed where so many had failed. But the straightforward concept and uncomplicated design of iTunes immediately hit a chord with consumers, who downloaded 1 million songs in its debut week. The service's popularity underscored Jobs' argument: free file sharing can be a pain in the neck. Once you square yourself with breaking the law, there's also the virus-ridden software, the porn links, the cumbersome downloads. "We're all about competing with piracy," says Jobs. The record industry gets it. "If the business could have done one thing...
...abiding habit. "Somebody in your neighborhood will always have pirated cable," says Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks. "But the social norm is, if you want cable, you pay for it." Yet freeloaders won't necessarily go quietly. LaTisha Knowles, 19, a Florida A&M sophomore and former avid file sharer, still refuses to buy CDs. "It's a waste of money," she says. Karen Keenan, 26, a copywriter in Chicago, downloads regularly from iTunes--but also from free file sharer LimeWire. "I have the same moral problem with sharing digital music that I have with public libraries--i.e., none...