Music to my ears
It seems strange to think that five years ago a host of peer-to-peer services claimed they had the legal basis to challenge old media’s archaic views on music copyright. Sean Fanning’s Napster was born on the premise that we shouldn’t have to pay inflated prices for music, and for a while, it seemed he was going to get away with it.
Fast forward to 2006, and Napster is a legitimate service, Apple’s iTunes is the world’s most influential music downloading service and now even Kazaa has gone legit. It’s an incredible about turn that puts the music labels firmly back in control, and I can’t disagree with it.
The original Napster was fun while it lasted, but no right-minded person could ever expect it to go on forever. And although there are still issues of price disparities between the cost of a track on iTunes UK and iTunes France, for example, you have to say neither is bad value. For those of us that were willing to pay a few pounds for a vinyl, cassette or CD single in the eighties and nineties, the availability of the UK’s top tracks for 79p is a steal.
And it’s all transferred directly to our MP3 players, accessible at the touch of a button. The simplicity and effectiveness of the technology and music industry’s partnerships, albeit belatedly, inspires a lot more goodwill towards the music moguls. It’s almost prompted me to delete all those tracks a stole using Fanning’s original Napster. But not quite.
