Ever since Napster raised its head in 1999 the music industry has been fighting a rear guard action against free. BitTorrent picked up Napster’s baton and ran with it, begetting music industry’s cartoon villain The Pirate Bay. Now though free has both changed and achieved far greater scale through licensed streaming services. Peer-to-peer file sharing remains a part of the equation but is very much the poor relation and pales in comparison to YouTube’s reach. An entire generation of music fans has been weaned on free and the music industry finds itself at a decision point in which the future role of free must be reassessed.
Companies mentioned in this report: Spotify, Pandora, Soundcloud, YouTube, Apple, Google, The Pirate Bay, Napster, BitTorrent
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