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Archive for March, 2011

It is unquestionable that the authorized digital music distribution channels have provided new methods for musicians and bands to sell their music and for users to purchase single tracks or entire albums from the comfort of their own homes. However, these legal systems still meet a number of challenges and have a long way to go before establishing a complete domination over the traditional distribution methods.

For one, the online digital music distribution systems have to compete with the illegal file sharing websites, which offer music for free and which are attracting millions of visitors. The majority of the authorized music stores responded to this threat by pricing the track downloads right, making the process straightforward, and offering millions of songs, which users could find in a single location. Most of them allow the music fans to pay once and download songs directly to their computers, mp3 players, or other portable devices and managed to pull users away from the torrent and p2p sites by offering superb quality and low prices. While the largest music stores such as iTunes, Rhapsody, and Amazon MP3 sell the songs and albums from a centralized location, newer digital music distribution sites such as Altnet and Wippit began using decentralized infrastructure, which allows them to scale up easily their stores as their user base grows.

New digital music distribution methods are offered by the mobile networks in the US, Europe, and Asia, where music downloads are offered directly to all the network’s subscribers. This is a new channel, which emerged after the latest developments in the cell phone technology allowed manufacturers to equip the latest models with built-in multimedia players. With a number of competing offline and online distribution channels, the end users are definitely spoiled for choice and they are paying lower prices than ever before. These new developments also presented greater opportunities to musicians and bands that are just starting up and seeking larger audience and recognition. While even a few decades ago, their only way of getting their music heard was to contact a distributor and hope that their albums would be recorded and sold in the record stores, today they could reach millions of fans easily.