I’ve been a follower of David Byrne’s site for quite some time, but it took a recent weekend jaunt to Vegas with an old pal to jar me into re-reading his stuff. And check this out – his prognostications on the future of music search:
Soon enough a site will open that is like a Google search for music downloads — downloads that are not copy-protected but you still pay for. eMusic tracks have no copy protection, for example, but their catalogue is limited. Eventually a meta search will turn up the tracks you want, wherever they live, on whomever’s site. Consumers don’t care who they buy them from if the interface is easy and intuitive. Soon enough iTunes consumers will find they have reached the 5th authorized player on their tracks and the frustration will set in when they can’t listen to the music they paid for. They’ll start to look elsewhere.
Byrne is riffing on SpiralFrog, an ad-supported model for free (but rather DRM crippled) downloads of music. In general, I find his site refreshing and worth the journey.