Friday, January 21, 2005

The new music business model?

Tuesday I received an email announcing that Verne Q. Powell Flutes, 'a maker of hand-crafted instruments that have made the “Powell Sound” the gold standard for flutes worldwide,' is opening an online music distribution service for flutists. The Recording Studio allows performers and composers to promote their works to a specialized audience of flute lovers. Downloads are handled like iTunes, at $1 a pop. Artists get free home pages and are paid royalties for their work. Is this the way of the future? Specialization and purely electronic music formats just don't help me when I want to browse. Where is the window-shopping, bookshelf browsing, and food sampling in the new world order?

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