Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

MemeStreams Discussion

search


This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Infinite Storage for Music. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Infinite Storage for Music
by possibly noteworthy at 9:23 pm EDT, Oct 10, 2007

Here's Ed Felten:

Last week I spoke on a panel called “The Paradise of Infinite Storage”, at the “Pop [Music] and Policy” conference at McGill University in Montreal. The panel’s title referred to an interesting fact: sometime in the next decade, we’ll see a $100 device that fits in your pocket and holds all of the music ever recorded by humanity.

This is a simple consequence of Moore’s Law which, in one of its variants, holds that the amount of data storage available at a fixed size and price roughly doubles every eighteen months. Extrapolate that trend and, depending on your precise assumptions, you’ll find the magic date falls somewhere between 2011 and 2019. From then on, storage capacity might as well be infinite, at least as far as music is concerned.

This has at least two important consequences. First, it strains even further the economics of the traditional music business. The gap between the number of songs you might want to listen to, and the number you’re willing and able to pay a dollar each to buy, is growing ever wider. In a world of infinite storage you’ll be able to keep around a huge amount of music that is potentially interesting but not worth a dollar (or even a dime) to you yet. So why not pay a flat fee to buy access to everything?


 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics