Dave Haynes

The stampede towards free music for the masses came a little closer with some news that Yahoo may start offering DRM-free music for free (that’s right I said free three times in that last sentence). I’m sure we’ll be hearing more and more similar announcements over the coming months. Will 2008 be the year that many people’s predictions about MPfree (cheezy but inevitable pun) finally come true.

Regardless, people still shouldn’t overlook the fact that a buoyant market for paid music can happily co-exist with these free services. And co-exist much more happily than it can with the P2P and illegal download services. My take is that the ad-funded and streaming services we will see emerge will be used more as a better option to traditional forms of music radio and used by a similar demographic. But it will be important for the music industry and stores to find a way to truly add value to a customer when they sell him/her a digital music file a la carte.