"MP3 compresses music files at near-CD quality for easy transmission over the Internet. Big record labels cry 'piracy,' but MP3 gains more credibility -- and converts -- every day."

Here Wired have summed up the issues - a technology has arrived that has taken a CD track which normally takes 10 floppy disks to store (approx. 10 megabytes) and reduces it to 1 floppy disk worth of space (approx 1.5 megabytes). The reduced, or compressed form of the music is called MP3. This technology transformed the way people can use the Internet to exchange music, even on a standard home connection (56k modem) an MP3 music track can be downloaded in 10 or 20 minutes. With users who have no phone charges (especially those in the US), they can set the machine to download and leave it running without concern for the costs - free music! Combine this with a CD burner; allowing the user to place this music on a CD they can play in most normal music systems and suddenly the balance of power changes.

While the had technology raced ahead, for web-users to take advantage of it's power, they needed sources of downloadable music. So for users to build a music collection of MP3 music, it still left the problem of distribution, for while potentially the Internet means communication for all, finding or offering copyrighted music on the net was not always easy. Websites that offered downloads, even inadvertently, of copyrighted material soon found themselves on the sharp end of a music industry legal challenge. It seemed the balance of power had not shifted as much as the technology.

The Napster Challenge

Self-styled culture campaigners 'Popstar Liberation Front' wrote; "Napster allowed people to search each other's computers for music they may want. Each member of the service contributes their music to be freely copied and in exchange, can help themselves to a copy of anyone else's tracks. It's a distribution system of incredible efficiency and diversity. A music library composed of millions of music lover's individual collections." Napster is a distribution service called 'peer to peer'. This means that users who login to the system allow the Napster computer to scan their machine and make a list of all MP3s held on the user's computer. The Napster computer adds this list to a giant database off all its users MP3 lists. This list becomes a catalogue a literally millions of MP3 tracks, which can be exchanged from one users computer to another's. Napster is only the middle-person mediating the exchange, it never holds or stores the potentially illegal files. Almost overnight the service exploded the traditional systems; through word-of-mouth millions signed up and began exchanging music. Copyrighted material flooded the system and virtually every music track from every genre from mainstream releases to obscure studio out-takes to unsigned bands emerged on the system. The balance of power had altered dramatically.

The End of Copyright?

"If a Song Means a Lot to You, Imagine What it Means to Us," Pleaded the 'Coalition for the Future of Music' in a campaign to stop digital copying that to many resembled the 'Home Taping is Killing Music' campaign of the 70s. This technology, currently giving record company executives sleepless nights, poses an interesting possibility; that copyright may become debunked. With so many people exchanging tunes across the Internet, attempts to regulate the existing laws of copyright are proving difficult. The expansion of this technology may make regulation impossible. It may mean that record companies can no longer look to selling the music as a revenue stream; they may need to look to other means to finance their shareholders. It could even mean that the business as we know it may not exist. Chuck D, front man with Public Enemy and now the MP3 site RapStation believes the future holds, "A million artists with a million labels."; A future where artists may not create millions of dollars, but they make a living from their art.

That said the industry don't even know if this technology will negatively effect sales. Some argue that services like Napster act as nothing more than a giant promotional tool, allowing fans to sample all kinds of music for free. If this is a possibility, then why is the music industry not embracing the technology? One factor could be that the music industry is notoriously short-sighted. A good example was their ban on playing singles on the Radio! Hard to believe as we know air-time equals sales but as Music writer, David Sinclair notes, "...it was also widely believed that playing records on the radio too often would actually discourage people from buying those records. After all, went the argument if you can hear them on the radio for free, why bother to go out and buy them?"

Perhaps the final word is this area should go to someone who has studied the area in detail. In an article on Wired, Lisa Crane, a managing partner for Media Venture Advisors remarked, "I don't think everyone will have broadband in the next few years, but even if they did, I don't think that means that will allow there to be a bazillion pirates. Music sales haven't dropped, and with two billion music files on Napster, you would think that it would have."

Next we look at DivX encoding and how the mp3 revolution will affect film!