The merger of Time Warner, a media conglomerate, with America Online, the largest Internet service provider, looks set to be just the beginning.

Right across the globe, companies dealing in entertainment and news will have to look urgently at their Internet access. Already EMI, the British-based music company, has announced another multi-billion dollar merger with AOL Time Warner.

This particular merger reflects the new millennium challenge for the music industry - online music sales. It will give rise to the world's largest record company, with more than a finger in the Internet pie. Combining the music wing of Time Warner, Warner Music, with EMI brings names like the Rolling Stones and Madonna under the one label. It is estimated that the new company, Warner EMI Music, will have sales of around £5 billion sterling a year.

While most of us will still probably contribute to those sales by paying a visit to the local record shop, increasingly people are buying their music online. In the US, online sales of CDs, tapes and records in 1998 were worth approximately $150 million. But market research predicts that figure will have risen to $2.6 billion within three years.

While buying CDs online is quite a social change from hanging out in local record shop at the weekend, the exchange still involves a tangible product. There is also a lot of waiting around for the postman to arrive with the parcel of CDs.

The real change will come when digital downloading becomes more significant. Still working out how to overcome piracy and dealing with Internet connections which take a long time to download, the music industry is tentatively embracing the new technology. Whereas online music sales will probably soar over the coming years, actual digital sales still look set, according to forecasters, to be only a fraction of the market, at around $150 million by 2003.

Once the technology is in place, Warner EMI, aligned to AOL, will surely be in the ideal set-up for the digital era.

They look set to make a killing - never mind exert phenomenal control over how we are kept informed and entertained over the coming decades.

Global domination and billions of dollars on the doorstep - why isn't everyone doing it? In fact, "everyone" is doing the utmost to find similarly effective ways to combine traditional media with new technologies.

"The reality is the market is moving at a million miles an hour and it's impossible to predict who will be getting into bed with whom," says one market analyst. "The emergence of these media/Internet organisations represents the real beginnings of the second phase of the Internet."

But there are problems, not least of which is European competition regulation. BSkyB owner Rupert Murdoch has already found them quite stifling: Sky is effectively prevented from getting too big in Europe, which means on a global level it just can't hope to compete with the likes of AOL Time Warner. But indications are that British regulators are easing up. This is seen by some as a positive step towards allowing British media companies to create similar global conglomerates to AOL Time Warner.

So the consumer is assured of a certain ease and speed of delivery. But delivery of what? The big question surrounding the creation of huge, powerful media organisations is control. There are already problems of information control and manipulation among media conglomerates as it stands. But if a handful of vast media empires have sole control over news, and even who entertains us, what will that mean for future generations? Easy access, but to highly controlled information, perhaps.

But some people are more optimistic. Arguing in The Irish Times last month that most mega-conglomerate executives couldn't control their way out of a brown paper bag, Oliver O'Connor said: "There is, as yet, no world government; there is, as yet, no controlling world corporation; vigilance, human rebelliousness and free business competition will protect us from both."