2007: Welcome to the music

To my mind, music is the trend which is going to develop the most on the web this year. Everybody knows the disc industry is slowly seeking. All the majors and music producers started to sell music online with different platforms (i tunes, fnac, virgin...). In 2006, the amount of legally downloaded music has doubled. By the way, new laws, such as DADVSI in Europe, aim at diminishing illegal music transfers. But on the other hand, more and more music producers get opposed to excessive protection over music. That is why Virgin and Fnac decided to sell unprotected mp3 on their websites. Because to the protection becomes so high, that several files can't be read anymore.

Concerning the way of improving musicians' incomes ,Jamendo, for example, proposes to give 50 % of the advertising incomes to the artists.

In 2006, 5 hundred millions of illegal downloads were recorded. This is half as many as in 2005. It proves that the users also become aware of the importance of respecting an equilibrium between legal and illegal downloads. Moreover, Myspace music is also a good way to discover new artists without downloading their music illegaly.


The MIDEM, meeting about all kinds of music businesses will occur in Cannes in a week. This will be a good occasion of seeing the latest news about this important part of the web.