Music and the 'Internet Boom'

At the height of the Internet boom, it seemed that we might be on the verge of a true revolution in the way music was bought and paid for — one that had the potential to forge lucrative new revenue streams for established record companies and also to make home-based musicians rich beyond their wildest dreams. Sadly, it never really took off. At the level of the independent musician seeking to make a living from directly distributing their wares via the Web, the dotcom crash finished off or severely hampered many of the companies that were supposed to be bringing homegrown music to the Net-based masses. And as far as major-league commercial music sales were concerned, it was always going to be difficult to persuade customers to pay for downloadable music while the likes of the original Napster service were operational. How could you possibly succeed at charging for mainstream music when anyone could obtain virtually anything for free — albeit not legally — with a few clicks of a mouse? As a result, the major record labels steered clear of on-line sales for several years, or promoted cumbersome, heavily copy-protected schemes which offered a limited choice of material at relatively high prices, with a predictable lack of success.