I came across this interesting piece in the New York Times, and thought I'd share it with everyone. It's a rather lengthy read, which is why I have split it into three separate parts. Part one today, part two tomorrow and part three Wednesday.

By Kevin Kelly

Technology is changing music. But then again, it always has. The invention of the piano 300 years ago centered Western music on the keyboard. Electricity's arrival in the late 19th century enabled the duplication of performances and, later, the amplification of instruments. With digitization, the pace of upheaval has further accelerated. Digital file- sharing technologies -- Napster and its offspring -- are now undermining the established economics of music. And everything we know about digital technologies suggests that Napster is only the beginning.

There is no music made today that has not been shaped by the fact of recording and duplication. In fact, the ability to copy music has been deeply disruptive ever since the invention of the gramophone. When John D. Smoot, an engineer for the European company Odeon, carted primitive recording equipment to the Indonesian archipelago in 1904 to record the gamelan orchestras, local musicians were perplexed. Why copy a performance? The popular local tunes that circulated in their villages had a half-life of a few weeks. Why would anyone want to listen to a stale rendition of an obsolete piece when it was so easy to get fresh music?

As phonographs spread throughout the world, they had a surprising effect: folk tunes, which had always been malleable, changing with each performer and in each performance, were transformed by the advent of recording into fixed songs that could be endlessly and exactly repeated. Music became shorter, more melodic and more precise.

Early equipment could make recordings that contained no more than four and a half minutes, so musicians truncated old works to fit and created new music abbreviated to adapt to the phonograph. Because the first sound recordings were of unamplified music, recording emphasized the loud sounds of singers and de-emphasized quiet instrumentals. The musicologist Timothy Day notes that once pianists began recording they tried, for the first time, to ''distinguish carefully between every quaver and semiquaver -- eighth note and sixteenth note -- throughout the piece.'' Musicians played the way technology listened. When the legendary recordist Frederick Gaisberg arrived in Calcutta in 1902, only two decades after the phonograph was invented, he found that Indian musicians were already learning to imitate recorded music and lamented that there was ''no traditional music left to record.''

As the technologies of reproduction bloomed in the last century, consumerism boomed. What consumers consumed -- whether in the form of a book, a CD or a can of Coke -- were exact copies. The ability to make copies in mind-boggling quantities, ceaselessly and perfectly, was the chief ingredient of mass culture. Music rapidly adapted to the culture of the copy. Reproductions were made exact, while copies were multiplied vigorously. Music lived in its constant reproduction.

The grand upset that music is now experiencing -- the transformation that Napster signaled -- is the shift from analog copies to digital copies. The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free.

Free is hard to ignore. It propels duplication at a scale that would previously have been unbelievable. In only 10 months, 71million copies of the music- sharing software Morpheus were downloaded. Of course, it's not just music that is being copied freely. It is text, pictures, movies, entire Web sites. In this new online world, anything that can be copied will be copied, free.

But the moment something becomes free and ubiquitous, its position in the economic equation is suddenly inverted. When nighttime electrical lighting was new, it was the poor who burned common candles. When electricity became easily accessible and practically free, candles at dinner became a sign of luxury.

In this new supersaturated online universe of infinite free digital duplication, the axis of value has flipped. In the industrial age, copies often were more valuable than the original. (Who wanted the ''original'' prototype refrigerator that the one in your kitchen was based on?) Most people wanted a perfect working clone. The more common the clone, the more desirable, since it would then come with a brand name respected by others and a network of service and repair outlets.

But now, in a brave new world of abundant and free copies, the order has inverted. Copies are so ubiquitous, so cheap (free, in fact) that the only things truly valuable are those which cannot be copied.

What kinds of things can't be copied? Well, for instance: trust, immediacy, personalization. There is no way to download these qualities from existing copies or to install them from a friend's CD. So while you can score a copy free of charge, if you want something authenticated, or immediately, or personalized, you'll have to pay.

In the domain of the plentifully free, music will do the only thing it can do: charge for things that can't be copied easily. A friend of a friend may eventually pass on to you the concert recording of a band you like, but if you pay, the band itself will e-mail it to you seconds after the performance. Sure, you can find a copy of that hit dance track, but if you want the mix approved by the legendary D.J., then you'll want to pay for it. Anyone can grab a free copy of Beethoven's Ninth, but if you want it customized for the audio parameters of your room or car, you'll pay for it. You may have downloaded that Cuban-Chinese rock band from the Morpheus site without paying, but the only way to get all that cool meta-information about each track, which lets you search for chords and lyrics, is to establish a relationship with the band by paying.

The quality least plentiful in a world of rampant free copies is attention. Each year more than 30,000 new music titles are released (or rereleased) into a very cluttered head space of new movies, new TV shows, new books, new games, new Web sites. No matter what your musical appetite, there are not enough hours in a lifetime to listen to but a tiny fraction of the global supply. People will pay simply to have someone edit the music and recommend and present selected material to them in an easy and fun manner. That is why producers, labels and the related ecology of reviewers, catalogers and guides will continue to make a living: they counter our natural lack of attention for the 10 million albums we can expect to see in another 50 years. In the end, an awful lot of music will be sold in the territory of the free because it will be easier to buy music you really like than to find it for free.

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RELEVANT LINKS

The New York Times
Original Article
Napster
Morpheus

It's true that the ability to copy anything perfectly has created a mass culture, (and sometimes trust in a brand name that doesn't deserve it), but I don't agree with the last paragraph.

As further evolution of technology (and society) has pushed music away from creativity and into big business, music fans WANT to give their attention to artists that are not in the mainstream.

This is either out of disgust of the big business or out of the nowadays common frustration that much of what's in the mainstream is aimed at the masses with the sole intention of making a profit.

Sure, finding good music might take work sometimes, but fans with similar tastes communicate and recommend artists to each other. It is this communication that further threatens to take away control from those who intend to control the marketplace.

Ah! So THAT was the thrill of a first post! I get it now!

yeah, and u also took the thrill of the second post cryxan

This is very interesting, So there are people who control the media? Free is always vogue.
There will always be free toasters, movies and music, and without free things society will begin to lose creative insight.

Point made Cryxan on your "Sure,finding good music takes work sometimes" I find folks out there that are "really" into music spend the time and the passion to go look, find a club in their area, try to find a cool radio station. I feel there are folks out there that are hunger for something besides what the big 5 keep pushing.