How much longer will we be able to buy digital music?

On June 1, 1999, a university student named Shawn Fanning sent a message to his friends telling them about a new program he’d written called Napster. It offered music fans a way to connect and trade digital music files quickly and efficiently using a new type of compressed file called an MP3. “Don’t share it with anyone, okay?” he asked. Within weeks, Napster was being used by thousands upon thousands of people.

It was the beginning of the end for the traditional recorded music industry. After a hundred years of running a business based on selling physical pieces of plastic to consumers, executives were shaken from their complacency and denial about digital music and forced to do something. They needed to stop music from being free. If the public wanted music in digital form, then it needed to be legally purchased.

Some of the major labels sat down with Napster, offering to buy the company. But that failed because they demanded 90 per cent of the profits. Even if they had been successful, anti-trust laws would have made such a purchase difficult. Regulators would have never let the industry have complete control over both the creation and distribution of music.

That prompted the labels to pair off to create a couple of digital storefronts. Universal and Sony teamed up on PressPlay, an ornery, miserable, restrictive, and not very functional digital storefront. EMI, AOL, BMG, and RealNetworks launched MusicNet, which was no better. Consumers hated both.

Enter Steve Jobs. Knowing that the recorded music industry was in a bind over piracy, the threat of anti-trust violations, and technical ignorance, he offered a solution: the iTunes music store. And lo, it was pretty good.

As sales of compact discs continued to fall, sales of