Music Publishing

11New media, technology, and copyright

Technology overview

As we write this book, the first decade of the twenty-first century is coming to a close. Technology writers seem to fall into two camps. There are the enthusiasts, who see the Internet and the digital revolution as the panacea that will bring the world together, and there are the nay-sayers who fear the unknown, and who are unable to adapt to new technologies. At the close of the twentieth century, we saw the introduction of the MP3 format, and the advent of ground-breaking file sharing programs, such as Napster, Kazaa, and Grokster.

As technological advances have introduced new products and techniques to the world of audio recording, musicians have been increasingly displaced by the ...