(* Source: Fred Wilson *)

Fred highlights some interesting observations on streaming music and its importance in the near future. 

Fred says...

"Like everything that has happened in digital music, the rights holders have been once again been forced into dealing with an emerging technology. Companies like last.fm and imeem and others have, over the past year, have done deals with the leading rights holders to give them permission to stream pretty much any song they want to listeners over the Internet. They can do this “on-demand”, meaning you want to listen to the new Jack Johnson song, you tell your favorite web music service that and it plays. They can also stream music in various forms of smart playlists, either the tracks you have marked as your favorites, or the tracks your friends have suggested to you, or the tracks that people who like the same music as you like. Each and every service has a different take on these playlists. I happen to like last.fm and hypemachine. You may like Pandora. Someone else might like Jango. Your kid’s myspace page might have an imeem playlist on it.

And because of all this innovation in streaming music over the past year, the number of people actively listening to music streamed over the Internet is rising quickly. It’s becoming a mainstream activity, particularly among the younger set.

I think of these web services as the new radio stations. Everyone of my generation has had their favorite radio stations. Everyone of my kid’s generation will have their favorite web music services. There will be hundreds of them. All supported by advertising, just like traditional radio stations, and all of them licensed by rights holders (eventually), and all of them paying the rights holders a little coin every time their song is played. And because these services will be free to anyone who wants to listen, they will be very popular. Never before have you been able to decide you want to listen to something you don’t currently own and then just play it. No searching on Limewire or bittorrent, no waiting for the download, you type in the name of the song you want to play and you hit play.

These services are coming to mobile phones, probably in the next year we’ll all be listening to pandora or last.fm in the gym on our phone instead of our limited library on our iPod. That’s when this new form of listening is going to explode. And that’s when Apple is going to wish it had thought more about streaming and less about file based music. But you can’t feel too badly about Apple because a good number of people will be listening to pandora or last.fm on their iPhones."

 

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