As music went digital, sharing and broadcasting became easier. The first digital music was presented in the form of Audio CDs with file size of a five minute song typically being around 50 MB. MP3 file format was introduced later to decrease the file size without apparent loss in sound quality. MP3 files are ten times smaller than Audio Cd files. The Mp3 revolution made distribution and downloading of music even easier. This opened up a whole new market for artists and music companies and it is universally acknowledged that the future of music is online.
While not all genres of music can adapt well to the online scene, pop and techno are well suited to it. Genres such as rock, country and jazz still sound best in analog format. For most listeners though, the difference is not really very noticeable, it is only true audiophiles who can notice the difference in quality. Techno music uses computer generated sounds heavily, thus what the listeners get to hear in digital format is almost exactly what the artist intended the listener to hear.
Sensing a change in trend of music market, many artists have started releasing their albums online, along with traditional Audio CDs. The music can be purchased online as an entire album or individual songs. This is one of the benefits of buying music online – one has the option to buy only the songs that he or she likes and not have to pay for the entire album. Also, the songs can be easily transferred to portable mp3 players or mobile phones without having to Rip them from the Cd first.
Rookie artists on shoe-string budget find it viable to release their work online as it costs very less and reaches out to many. Even veteran artists have started releasing online-only albums.
The future of music seems clear – very soon audio CDs will be obsolete and music will mostly be available online. The way audio cassettes killed the LPs and audio CDs in turn killed cassettes, online music is going make audio CDs outdated. Connoisseurs however will still swear by LPs and HD audio CDs, but the mass market will certainly shift towards the world wide web. With increasing broadband penetration even in developing countries, the online music market will be huge very soon. Online music is also greener than music on CDs as manufacturing CDs causes some pollution and also uses a lot of plastic. So, in future the internet will be the mainstay of music and will benefit listeners, artists and also the environment.