[TankGirl]

A great article, thanks for bringing it to our attention assorted and MikeHunt!

Kevin Kelly, the journalist behind the story (also the executive editor of Wired magazine) definitely has a clue about what is going on in the filesharing scene. His visionary list of the things that could be part of the new economy of music in the era of free digital copying is well worth copying here :

• Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.

• On auction sites, music lovers buy and sell active playlists, which arrange hundreds of songs in creative sequences. The lists are templates that reorder songs on your own disc.

• You subscribe to a private record label whose agents troll the bars, filtering out the garbage, and send you the best underground music based on your own preferences.

• The most popular band in the world produces only very good ''jingles,'' just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials.

• The catalog of all musical titles makes more money than any of the record companies.

• A generator box breeds background music tailored to your personal tastes; the music is supplied by third-party companies that buy the original songs from the artists.

• Because you like to remix dance tunes, you buy the versions of songs that are remix-ready in all 24 tracks.

• You'll pay your favorite band to stream you its concert as it is playing it, even though you could wait and copy it at no cost later.

• The varieties of musical styles explode. They increase faster than we can name them, so a musical Dewey Decimal System is applied to each work to aid in categorizing it.

• For a small fee, the producers of your favorite musician will tweak her performance to exquisitely match the acoustics of your living room.

• So many amateur remixed versions of a hit tune are circulating on the Net that it's worth $5 to you to buy an authenticated official version.

• For bands that tour, giving away their music becomes a form of cheap advertising. The more free copies that are passed around, the more tickets they sell.

• Musicians with the highest status are those who have a 24-hour Net channel devoted to streaming only their music.

• Royalty-free stock music (like stock photography), available for any use, takes off with the invention of a great music search engine, which makes it possible to find music ''similar to this music'' in mood, tempo and sound.

• The best-selling item for most musicians is the ''whole package deal,'' which contains video clips, liner notes, segregated musical tracks, reviews, ads and artwork -- all stored on a well-designed artifact in limited editions.

• Despite the fact that with some effort you can freely download the song you think you want in a format you think will work for your system, most people choose to go to a reliable retailer online and use the retailer's wonderful search tools and expert testimonials to purchase what they want because it is simply easier and a better experience all around.

- tg