ABSTRACT
Introduction roducers, consumers, and advertisers alike are gravitating to the digital domain, which offers ever-expanding media content options via a
growing variety of devices. For example, Randall Roberts’s Los Angeles Times review of Van Halen’s latest album, Different Kind of Truth, effectively describes this digital evolution and the format choices today’s music listeners have:
make a choice-to buy, to rent, to steal-but today the choice is immediate and with fewer people in the way. Today’s digital audio technology drives this choice by removing the traditional retail barriers between consumer and content, and enabling consumers to interact with content in new, direct and personal ways. Through various software and hardware tools, consumers and content providers become intertwined in the discovery process, co-creating playlists, sharing recommendations, enabling file and information flow, and ultimately, facilitating an acquisition decision.
