It is very difficult to understand the importance of the Digital Revolution in the music business. The most knowledgeable experts in the industry with decades of experience are totally lost when they think about the future of the music distribution. The only clear fact is that there is a very significant transition going on right now and that it will change the world forever. There is no need to be interested in the Internet or music to know it. It is happening so globally and so fast that nobody can escape from it. .
Since the beginning of the music business until now, everything was really simple. Like the clothing business or the furniture business, the goods for sale were tangible. The goal of the artist, the record label, and all the parties involved in the business was to sell records. Vinyl, cassette, and compact disc are tangible, digital music is not. So how do you buy music now? How do you get it? How do you listen to it? How do you carry it? All these are questions that even a person who worked for fifty years in the industry doesn"t know. The answer can be easily be provided by a fifteen year old who spends many hours on the computer and probably knows how to get that music, how to listen to it, and how to carry it in case he wants to go somewhere and take the music with him. .
What is MP3 anyway? What does it mean to download a song? How do you save a song? Where can you get it from? There are endless questions that are not only related to the way music is distributed, but also the vocabulary. The new vocabulary was invented by teenagers who are the ones that are already used to having digital music and they know how to refer to it. In fact, those terms are very quickly becoming part of our daily vocabulary and words that you would never hear ten years ago are some of the most popular words today: mp3, download, peer to peer, etc. .
There are many questions without answers. If you read ten different books about the music business, they are all talking about the same history and information of the past.