Most of us, when we were kids, listened to the radio to hear the latest, greatest songs in the music world. We listened eagerly for something new, something original, something our buddies hadnt heard before, and when a song made its way into our collective conscience, we would wait for hours for our favorite DJ to play the song for us, sometimes even for days, just so we could hit the record button and get the thing on tape.

At the time, the record companies knew we were taping our favorite music, but they didnt really care, because the quality of the recording was low and the DJ would more often than not talk over the first and last five seconds of the thing, making it worthless as something to swap or sell. Mix tapes were a personal thing, but they couldnt really compare to the real thing an LP, or, in later years, a compact disc.

But just as happens with every great hole in supply, eventually technological advances catch up with demand. And so it was that the publics desire for quality (free) music created the double cassette recorder, which made it possible for us to copy our mix tapes for our friends. The record companies tried to ban these devices, claiming they would lead to the end of the music industry. But they didnt&

Then video cassette recorders came along, allowing us to record our favorite music videos from MTV and play them endlessly. The music companies didnt like this either, and tried to get VCRs banned, claiming they would ruin the music industry. But they didnt&

Then along came Compact Discs, which allowed a cleaner recording to audio cassette, and late down the line, CD burners, which allowed people to copy CDs directly. Later still came DVD, and satellite radio. Everywhere you looked, someone was using new technology to make access to music easier, and everywhere that happened, the music industry tried (timidly) to put a stop to it. And then came Napster.

The online music world has led a fraught and tumultuous existence over the past decade. As early as 1996, pioneer internet users were passing around copies of their favorite music using chat servers and email, with equipment and formats that sometimes took as long as a full day just to download one song. But it was Shawn Fannings Napster program that, in 1999, brought the ability to download music freely to every net user.

Napster provided the means for anyone to log in anonymously, search for their favored songs across millions of users hard drives, and download those songs quickly and simply. The fact that any internet newbie could master Napster in minutes added greatly to its early success, but it was mass collectors, largely operating from university and college computers, who turned the system into one of the biggest buzz-makers in computing history.

What Napster did was create a huge central directory of every song owned by users on their system. If you wanted to get a copy of I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow, you would just type the band and song name into Napster, hit search, and you would be presented with a long list of matches. You then just selected the one you wanted to download, and it would suck down on to your drive.

Of course, when people find a loophole that allows them to get something for nothing, they do often tend to go overboard, and thats exactly what the community of Napster users did en masse. Instead of just finding the music they needed, users were soon downloading everything they could find, hoarding songs and albums that they had little interest in, just so they could say they had them. It was not uncommon for college students to use multiple computers at their school to download thousands of songs on to CD in a few hours, most of which would never actually be listened to. This, obviously, annoyed the hell out of the record companies in ways that double cassette recorders never could.

While Napster made it clear to users that its service was designed to help users find legal music downloads, it also made little effort to stop people from trafficking in pirated material through its system, which led the body that represents the record companies politically, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to take legal action against the company, effectively charging it with mass piracy and the loss of tens of millions of dollars in sales.

Interestingly, rather than kill music downloading completely, the court action had the opposite effect, spreading word of Napster across the globe like wildfire, which saw millions of new users sign up even as the creators of the program were fighting to keep the system from closure. So many people had become addicted to music file-sharing that the prospect of life without Napster seemed a punishment few could take, and so those with the skills began coding Napster alternative programs.

Gnutella was an early variant, created by Nullsoft (the company behind the hugely successful WinAmp music software), and though they quickly took the program off the market, hackers and crackers were soon ripping Gnutella to pieces and reconstructing it to suit their needs. Morpheus was soon on the scene, and as Napster began to cooperate with the record companies by filtering out popular song titles from the system, the new program rapidly grew.

But Napsters shift towards cooperation was not enough for the giant music conglomerates, who threw up hurdle after hurdle designed to take Napster out of business. Even heavy metal group Metallica joined the fray, launching their own lawsuit and earning the rage of many of their fans in the process. Lawyers for the file-sharing software company made the all-too valid point that, if Napster was in any way responsible for the actions of copyright violators, so too were the phone companies that provided the phone lines upon which the music was being shared. They claimed that the ISPs were just as liable as they were, because they didnt actually house any illegal files on their servers, rather they simply facilitated the searching of said files on other peoples computers.

We may never know if the judge hearing that particular legal case understood the difference, or merely figured that while Napster wasnt breaking the law per se, they were acting against the spirit of the law, but either way, the judge told the company in July 2001 that if it couldnt stop illegal files from being passed through its service, it would have to shut its doors. And thats what it did, after a judge stopped record company Bertelsman, who had invested heavily in Napster in an effort to legitimize the company, from taking it over.

Since Napster shut its doors, the company has since reemerged as a legitimate music download source, albeit with far less success than it enjoyed in the early days, and literally dozens of illegal file sharing programs have taken its place to fill the free music download void. These, such as WinMX, BitLord, Kazaa, Morpheus, BearShare, Aimster, Napigator, AudioGalaxy, and Limewire, run the gamut from useful to useless, but they all share a common element they take the stance that, if theyre not hosting pirated music, they have nothing to do with those using their systems that do. Translated: Use at your own risk.

For too long, classical music has been regarded as the domain of instrumentalists, composers, academic musicologists and, typically, anyone over 40 years old. But while the majority of today’s youth would rather listen to Britney Spears’ greatest hits or watch My Chemical Romance on MTV, the view that young people are completely uninterested in classical music is not just erroneous – it’s simply not grounded in historical reality.

Mozart, widely regarded as one of the greatest classical composers of all time, wrote his first symphony at age eight and was dead by the age of 35. Schubert also died when he was 31, while Chopin famously didn’t live past the age of 39. Moreover, the phenomenon of the castrato in classical music in the 1700s shows that young people haven’t just been interested in classical music throughout the years – they’ve practically been canonised as part of a classical music tradition that, although lost, is not forgotten.

Today’s orchestras, choirs and opera houses are packed with young singers and musicians, many of whom are still in their twenties. Moreover, almost all modern, successful classical musicians will have undergone training from a very young age. Charlotte Church may have made headlines when she released her debut album “Voice of an Angel” in 1998 aged just thirteen, but while her phenomenal mainstream success was not typical, the fact that she was such a young musician in the classical industry was.

In the twenty-first century, the likes of Katherine Jenkins and “male soprano” Michael Maniaci, 28 and 29 years of age respectively, are making headlines the world over for their innovative approach to classical music and their stunning vocal range. Edward Gardner, the new Music Director of Glyndebourne on Tour (one of the UK’s premier operatic fixtures), is also only 28, proving that there is certainly no dearth of young people performing classical music, although there may be fewer youths than OAPs listening to it.

But as classical music institutions and performing arts organisations try their best to reduce their median audience age, classical music isn’t just becoming more accessible to young people – it’s also becoming more affordable. Scottish Opera, for instance, offer special ticket deals for people under 26, while many music-specialist booksellers are making classical music books and guides that will help younger classical listeners learn more about the craft. So while many may lament the loss or decline of youth interest in classical music in today’s world, they need only look towards the country’s concert halls to see where the future lies.

In the 1980’s, MTV brought about major changes in how we listened to music. The birth of the music video changed the views of thousands of people by combine visual and audio elements. It tested the limits by calling attention to new music. People liked what they saw and heard, the results were millions of dollars in increased record sales.

An artist uses a music video to promote their music. In past decades, they had to rely on television stations, however today music videos can be found everywhere. When you visit a movie store, or music store, you will find that there are thousands of different music videos that line the shelves.

Today with all of the changes in technology, you are able to watch music videos online. It is possible to download them so you can listen to them wherever you want to go. Another advantage to watching videos online that you have downloaded is that you will not receive any of the pop up ads that are associated with some site.

In order to watch videos online, you will need a few things. First, you will need a computer whether it is a desktop or laptop that is equipped with Microsoft Windows software version 98 or higher and a media player. There are several different media players to choose from, you can use which ever you prefer.

After you watch music videos online, you can save it to your media player and view it whenever you choose.

There are also quite a few different portable media players that allow you to watch videos online. MP3/4 players and ipods allow you to transfer your music video to share with your friends. The high quality and picture clarity are incredible.

Although there are sites that allow you to watch music video online, some are subscription based and you have to pay a monthly fee. There are however many that allows you to watch music videos online at no cost such as YouTube, MySpace and Yahoo. All of these sites have extensive lists of music videos in all genres from country and western to classical jazz; the choices are endless.

Summary:

MTV introduced the music video over twenty years ago. There have been many changes over the years, and the latest it the ability to watch music video online and to download what we choose. As technology advances, the ability to watch music videos online will advance with it.

The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.

1. Offer three consumption models.

a. Offer all content free with ads.

All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.

b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.

This is the same as 1a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.

c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.

There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell DRM-free songs.

2. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.

The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.

3. End format wars.

When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. Like 1c, this applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.

The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.

The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. Coupled with 1c, the industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.

Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.

4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.

What 1a and 1b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.

Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.

6. Offer a choice of bitrates.

Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 1a and 1b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 1c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.

7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.

The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.

8. Leverage viral marketing.

This is an extension of 1a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music, movies and all TV programs should get on board and realize the massive new source of constant ad revenue never before possible without the new technology.

These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.

Virtually all established music artists maintain web sites – or their record company does it for them. Some use them as a personal connection for fans, by providing periodic blog entries. It’s a tool to sell a few CDs from past years, announce show dates and provide some connection for the fans. There are also hardcore fan sites, especially for veteran bands like the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, who have assembled twenty five or thirty years worth of fans. True also for musicians who have been gone for a long time; you can find many sites for Elvis and others for ground breaking rockers like Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly.

Many of the newer acts maintain web sites, but virtually all of the emerging musicians who are aggressive use multiple resources on the web. The biggest online phenomenon in the music business has been the emergence of MySpace and, to a lesser extent, other social networking sites such as Pandora and Pure Volume. For some bands, MySpace has supplanted the need for a personal website.

By the end of 2005 more than 600,000 bands were using MySpace to upload songs and videos, announce shows, promote albums and interact with fans. The reason? There are 50 million potential fans on MySpace, and many of them use the site to search for new music as well as established acts. MySpace has acted on the remarkable marriage of music, listeners and their web site by starting a record label.

Established acts like Nine Inch Nails and Madonna, Wheezer and Depeche Mode have previewed albums and videos on the site, prior to releasing them. MySpace Music is a prime convergence point for bands and fans. The lead singer for Dashboard Confessional believes that MySpace is what drove the band’s success, leading to their record contract.

What sets MySpace and similar sites such as Pure Volume apart from the web presence of established music powers like MTV.com and Rollingstone.com is the inclusiveness inherent in a social networking site. All artists are welcome on MySpace, from Christian rockers to death metal thrashers. Also important is the format: everything on the site is linked to something else. Click on a user’s image and you’re sent to a profile featuring pictures, blogs, personal interests and links to cyber pals and bands. Keep clicking and you’re sent to more profiles and search results.

The regional rock act Coppermine out of Brooklyn is an example of the promotional power of MySpace. Jonathan Buck, guitarist and lead singer of the group says his band’s profile on MySpace has drawn nearly 300,000 visitors. The band can instantly distribute messages and news to more than 115,000 MySpace users who have added Coppermine as a “friend” on their profile. With that network in place, Coppermine no longer has to devote time and money to flooding radio stations with CDs or plastering concert posters around town.

Record labels understand that the Internet is the most effective promotional and communications device out there. Radio is more constrained; formats are fewer and the consolidation in the radio industry has reduced airplay to safe, established acts. When’s the last time you saw a video on MTV, or at least a complete one? The Internet and its social networking sites have become the source of choice for both music and music videos for millions of fans.