I was browsing some old NME stories today and found a really interesting report from way back in 1998 regarding how the internet will change the way people access and buy music in the future, how right they were.

The story is based around the US independent label TwinTone Records (you can tell it’s old by the use of the name records in the company name!), back in 1998 they were in the throws of making all their music available over the internet, probably quite a bold move back then due to the bandwidth available to most home PC users and the fact that music downloading was completely unheard of to the average internet user.

I found the following quote to be pretty accurate:

“I guess I approach the music business from a slightly different perspective,” he says. “I’ve always been more technologically minded. My view is that, 15 years from now, everything will be pay-per-view. You’ll have an Internet connection and your video, your games, your television and your phone service will be operated from this one unit. You’ll get one bill per month and, if you want to listen to music, you’ll pay a few pennies per song. It’ll be the same with movies. You’ll be able to watch them for a couple of dollars uninterrupted or you’ll get them free with commercials.”

How right he was.  I download all my music these days, in fact just the other day I was having the “do I get rid of all my old Vinyl” conversation with a friend, he is adamant that he wants to keep his, whilst I feel that if I’ve not played any of them for about 15 plus years, I probably never will, of course, I’ll keep a few collectibles and favourites, but the majority of them I’ve since downloaded again anyway, some of them I’ve also bought on CD as a half way stage (they are all up in the loft now incidentally!)

I even watched  film on pay per view this weekend, not something which I do very often, and to be honest, I wish I hadn’t bothered as it wasn’t very good, but Paul at TwinTone was right, music and films are both available online (tv too) for very little cost.

So I wonder if he had any idea how big the whole online music downloading and piracy thing would become, with some bands such as pixie lott becoming famous because of youtube and the ability for people to download her music, whereas many larger artists are complaining that album sales have decreased due to illegal downloading. Personally I feel that if they reduced the price of an album more people would be inclined to pay for their albums and singles.

Of course outside of the scope of actual recorded material, any6 band still has the scope to make their living from playing live and selling merchandise, or making other public appearances, doing interviews and appearing on adverts etc, so it’s not that they don’t have the ability to make a very good living, even if their music is entirely downloaded.

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