The Creative Commons blog has a thought-provoking post about CC licensed music. It seems that the latest Nine Inch Nails album, Ghost I-IV, is available under a CC license. This means that you can legally download it from any of the dozens (if not hundreds) of dowloading services on the web… for free.
However, the album is listed as the best-selling album for 2008 on Amazon.com’s MP3 store. Give that some thought, because it signals that the transition to a new business model is well under way. If that many people are paying for the download, you know many more are downloading the CC version; people are still still paying for Amazon’s download because they feel that NIN is worth it.
The music industry has been the razor’s edge of this new business model’s birth, though not without conflict. Those of us who work with books and journals should pay attention, because at some time in the not-too-distant future, our media will undergo these sorts of transformations. What do libraries need to do in order to adapt? What do we need to do in order to lead the way?
found via the Lessig blog
