Sounds of the future

Leading the way, one young man has left his mark on music software forever. He is Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster and a college dropout who spent 60 hours creating a program, which allowed the sharing of music files. The result of his idea has forever transformed the way people acquire music on the Internet.

"I think that Napster has really shown the music industryy that Internet music is something the people really want," Fanning said during a recent interview. However, Internet music and the advancement of music technology have been on a roller coaster ride since the emergence of Napster, and some may wonder about the direction Internet music will take in the future.

This year, the MP3 industry was one of the biggest things to hit the Internet. In response, the Record Industry Association of America decided to file a lawsuit against the widely used peer-to-peer music-trading site known as Napster. In addition to the formal lawsuit, some artists complain about Napster, arguing they are not receiving compensation for the availability of their music. However, among all of the protesters, Napster still retains the support of many college students and emerging artists.

"I am completely behind sharing music on the Internet," said Monc, an independent British artist, during a recent interview. "My band relied on the Web primarily to get our music out independently. I still believe that if you like an album, you'll go out and buy it." Yet with the recent court ruling, Napster users have seen a drastic decrease in the number of songs available for download. Some may wonder if peer-to-peer music trading will still exist on the Internet in the future or if the industry is heading for an age where listeners must visit music sites, such as CDnow.com, and download songs for a fee.

"I think that it will be some sort of a blend between the two," Fanning said. "Right now the public version of Napster is really the first generation of peer-to-peer technology. What we're doing and where we think Internet music is going is more of a blend of a centralized system, where the server helps make really important decisions about where you should connect to, where to get the best version of the files, and helps to provide additional information on the music. But I don't think it will go to just a strictly centralized system, because there's a very clear value of a peer-to-peer system."

With the decrease in music availability on Napster, many have turned to such places as CDnow.com. However, although this may seem like it will have great success in the future, it may still have some kinks to sort out, according to Professor Robert Fink of the Musicology Department. "I was surfing the Web and I saw that you could get a single track by downloading it off of CDnow.com," Fink said in a recent interview. "I thought this was great. So I tried to buy it, and it took me three hours. I had to download this player from Liquid Audio, and it didn't work. They didn't tell me before I gave up my money that it wasn't going to be an MP3 (format)."

For reasons such as these, some may wonder if there will be anything else that, like Napster, offers an immense variety of easily downloadable music. These are key characteristics that have set Napster apart from other peer-trading sites such as Gnutella. "At Napster right now, we're really working on improving the system," said Fanning. "Some of the stuff we're building could almost be considered a second generation of the system, in the sense that it's designed to improve what we think are two of the most important features to the user: making sure users can find what they're looking for and making sure that they get that file successfully."

However, since the RIAA won its case, music lovers may wonder if record companies hold the key to the future of Internet music. "I don't think I was ever that optimistic that the record companies would just simply roll over and go away when Napster came out," said Fink. "History shows that eventually these new technologies, such as Napster, are integrated into the whole business of music. But there is often a bitter battle, and if the record company does not control the technology, they succeed in delaying it, or killing it, for some time."

All court battles aside, it's obvious that Internet music and its emerging software have left their mark on society. Napster has changed the way people listen to music, and it will continue to play a big part in the ongoing Internet music revolution.