For utopians, MP3 is a way to liberate music from the clutches of gatekeepers and profiteers, and perhaps to return music to its intangible essence. But the recording business sees MP3 as a Pandora's box of copyright destruction, unleashing anarchy and piracy while robbing musicians of royalties and record labels of capital. In effect, both sides are correct. There's bound to be serious legal scuffling between people who own copyrights and people who believe in the hacker credo that information wants to be free. Yet recorded music is considerably more than a corporate revenue source, and the implications of digital distribution go far beyond the particulars of software and gadgets and royalty collection.
Digital distribution can turn that sentiment into a reality.
And that shift could alter the way music is made, released, sold, stored and valued. It will affect everyone from listeners to musicians to record-store clerks to manufacturers of CD shelves, and it will certainly disrupt the routines that have grown over a century of recorded music. It means listeners can have more choices while musicians may get away with making fewer of them. It means recorded music will be more accessible but also, perhaps, less respected and inviolable. Music that isn't in solid form may just not seem as significant as those antique CDs.