The race is on to establish a dominant digital format for the distribution of music on the World Wide Web. Technology companies are announcing new standards, services and strategic alliances on an almost daily basis, all with the goal of offering music fans an alternative to buying compact discs in a shop or ordering them by post.
But the new-found ease of putting songs on the Web also has spawned a growth in piracy of popular songs. Making online distribution of recordings secure against this piracy is a key objective of the music industry and is guiding much of the evolution of digital formats.
Some of the new companies appearing on the scene to promote music on the Web say the established industry is really just trying to preserve its franchise. "All this talk about security is nonsense," said Michael Robertson, president of MP3.com, a website offering music in the MP3 digital format. "The big five record companies have to come up with a system that protects their business model."
Robertson's own model is to use his site as a repository of music for download. "The race is just beginning," he said.
What began it was the emergence of new compression formats that permit relatively smaller files of recorded music and therefore faster downloads. Downloading a typical three-minute song as an audio file used to take an hour. New formats squeeze the data into smaller files that can be downloaded in minutes.
Companies promoting competing formats such as MP3, Liquid Audio and a2b Music presented their respective visions at a recent software summit in New York. Sitting with them was a consultant to the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the major record companies, which is taking a very close interest in this technology.
The RIAA has responded to new audio formats such as MP3 by establishing its Secure Digital Music Initiative. This provides a system for developing a digital protocol which would try to protect the copyrights of recorded music.
"What we want to do is propagate the terms of sale," said Nicholas DiGiacomo, the consultant. In other words, the industry wants to make it possible to put in music files special instructions that would let music companies control how the recording is used.
For example, he said, a recording company could permit the song file to be heard only once, or for just three days after it is downloaded.
This would allow music companies to use such formats as MP3, Liquid Audio and a2b Music to distribute their music on terms ranging from unfettered and free distribution to tightly controlled one-time releases.
The record industry announced the security initiative after a court ruled against its request to block sales of the Rio, a portable music device that plays back the MP3formatted songs which are widely available on the Web. The association has appealed the decision.