This is my first post. I remember when I was a little boy, my grand-dad had these huge Black discs and he used to often played it on his gramophone. My dad too being a music buff had a good collection (according to him) of old classics. He had many LPs ranging from ‘old’ english numbers to ‘old’ hindi hits. There were few M.S. Subhalakshmi tracks too. 
Today with the gramophone being a thing of the past, my grand-dad always mumbles when I listen to music on my iPod. And when I tend to ignore him, he utters with a sigh “Those were the days!”
Those were certainly the days at least for my parents and grand-parents along with their entire generation. With technology poking its nose in all fronts of our lives, this gen-y can’t live without it. The gadgets we use are getting smaller and compact with the storage big enough to fit an entire universe, it is obvious that today’s generation is wired up for good. Taking an example of a cellphone, its task has grown from just being a device for communication to a multi-functional device with the capability to play music, videos and several other multimedia.
With the gadgets more or less affordable to the masses, it is a common site seeing people hooked on to their iPods and Cellphones all the time. A device can store about thousands of songs and with songs being “freely available” on the internet, a music-lover is happier than ever.
All’s well always doesn’t end well, there is one fella who isn’t taking this matter lightly, the Music Industry. Before the CD cum Internet era, the music industry was a profitable industry (it still is) with music artists selling their music through LPs, and Cassettes distributed by the Music Labels they were contractually signed. Today, with the emergence of portable media along with the internet, the prime art of bootlegging rose to a new level.
As a measure, the Music Labels with their Digital Media downloads had to provide DRM-free music to entice the customers into buy legit Music. After that, it was the iTunes phenomenon, fortunately a success story in a making. Apple Inc. with their iTunes software proved to be a major hit as the software was freely available and all one needed was an account. iTunes is now the #1 music retailer in the US of A.
That was a short-term relief for the Music Industry, but then came along Trent Reznor. Trent Reznor is the founder and the lead singer of an American band named Nine Inch Nails. He has stepped forward to redefine the music business. In 2007, he scraped his contract with his Music Label ‘Interscope Records’ and decided to distribute his music by himself. In March 2008, he released an album Ghosts I-IV independently under a Creative Common license with the first volume freely available for download. The album was a huge success with 750,000 purchases amassing $1.6 mn. In May, he followed up with another album called The Slip, this album was freely available for download in various formats for the loyalty shown by his fans.
With the success of Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails, it has influenced many other artists to follow suit. If this is the trend to follow, the Music Labels are as good as dead in years to come. Free Music in a sense is reborn.
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