what does the future of music have in store?

"What is the future of music? Has it become a business of lamentations and lawsuits against electronic sharing, foretelling the end of recorded media as we know it? Or is there something much more interesting happening here that offers exciting new opportunities?"

This is a question that I am sure many have thought about. It is hard to make predictions about the evolution of music technology now into 10, 30, or 50 years from now. Many of the predictions that were made in the past about technology today sounded far fetched but have come true.

"But isn't piracy destroying the industry? "There are two forms that are currently labeled piracy," says Kusek. "You have the wholesale replication of CDs and DVDs. To me, that's counterfeit products and is obviously not to be tolerated. It is certainly evil and criminal, and bad for business."

"But the other kind of behavior that is labeled as piracy -- downloading files and trading files with your friends -- I'm not sure that I would put that in the same camp. Often there is no profit margin, there's no distribution network, other than yourself and a handful of people that you know. Generally, you are not selling files to your friends."

"I don't think that file sharing and downloading of music is going to stop," says Kusek, "until there is something easier, and better, and cheaper, and more appealing. So as I argue in the book, why not embrace that behavior, license and tax it, and somehow derive money from it? Make it easier to find music, improve the quality of the files, and make it easier to record, instead of trying to fight it. It seems a completely losing battle; People are never going to stop doing it as long as the price of CDs is too high. So why not go with the flow and embrace it?"

'So the future of music may be bright after all. "I would really encourage the manufacturers to try to develop new formats," says Kusek. "I think that is the only way they are going to be able to survive. DVDs will sell for quite a while, but they are going to run into the same issues. New formats are the key, and trying to really understand people's behavior shifts. This Internet, digital networks, cell phone, wireless thing is not going to stop. It's just going to grow and get more pervasive. I don't think that it has to be an either/or choice, if the formats are right, and they are in the middle, and are married to that network. In one form or another, I think there is lots of potential."'