Riddle me this: What would you get if you crossed a BlackBerry with an iPod? The answer: The future of the music business. Let me explain. Imagine, if you will, an iPod as a wireless digital ladle. It would dip into a nearly bottomless stream of continual music, scooping up any song you wanted, when you wanted, where you wanted. There would be no need for CDs, hard drives, or any other storage device. And trying to capture such music would be about as easy as trapping mist in a jar. Every song would contain a digital expiration date, so, over time, they would evaporate.
If there were no need to store music, indeed no way it could be stored, then piracy would go the way of Blackbeard, a spooky tale of yesteryear to amuse your grandchildren. Fanciful? Not at all. After all, this isn"t my brainchild, it"s a concept called Everywhere Internet Audio (EIA) that has been kicking around university think tanks and newsgroups.
Unconnected Dots
Now the time has come for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and its new bud, the music industry, to embrace EIA. The concept represents a huge new opportunity for both. As technology writer Don Tapscott put it recently in the New York Times, EIA is a way for music executives to "do unto the file-swappers what the file-swappers has done to them." That is, the music industry should use wireless technology and the Internet as a springboard to jump ahead of file-swapping pirates.