Gregory Jackson, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Chicago, observed in The Digital Carrot, The Digital Stick (Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2007) that illegal file sharing would rapidly become moot if we could resolve these problems with respect to legal online acquisition of music and movies: I can’t always get what I want; I can’t always use what I get; and I don’t think the price is fair.

Maybe we're close. Consider:

Amazon.com offers music in MP3 format—free of digital rights management and thus untethered from the iPod—often for less than what iTunes charges. Nokia is bundling music access with cell phones, and Universal Music Group is looking to extend this model to other devices. iTunes is suddenly a dominant force in digital movie rentals, having partnered with all major studios, adding alternatives to services already offered by Amazon.com, Netflix (now with unlimited streaming videos) and hulu.com. NBC, CBS, and ABC make available streaming video of popular TV shows from their websites.

Then there's iTunes' new ranking as #2 music retailer in the world, behind only Wal*Mart. And as the ars posting indicates, that's #2 relative to all music sales, including CDs; not just digitally purchased music.

Still a lot of experimentation and practical problems, but the glimmer of a tunnel end seems apparent.

Tags: new business models