The Nevada Sagebrush

As movies, music and TV move toward the Internet, traditional media falls out of formatting spotlight.

Ever since Napster planted the first seeds of consuming media over the Internet, the days of going to music stores with long lines, overly-friendly sales clerks and annoying children are numbered.

Now getting music, movies and TV over the Internet is easy and can be gotten without the chance of jail time.

David Calkins, owner of local music store Discology, said a lot of his customers have archived their entire music collections onto their computer and then dumped their CDs. Calkins said when it comes to music formatting it all comes down to age.

“No one under 25 shops here,” Calkins said. “Chances are if you are under 25, you never even owned a CD.”

Even though Calkins may be exaggerating, the signs in the CD’s sales decline can be seen. Apple left out the CD/DVD drive of its newest laptop citing users are able to get all of their media through iTunes.

Calkins said the record companies are moving towards streaming music over the Internet.

The industry has turned to music producer Rick Rubin, who worked with musicians like the Beastie Boys and Johnny Cash, to save the industry by creating a service where users pay a monthly fee for access to a huge library of songs, much like Rhapsody, reported New York Times Magazine.

However music isn’t the only media turning to streaming content. TV networks have been making solid profits from ads tied to streaming video and sales of their shows through iTunes said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principle analyst for marking research company Parks Associates. He said the networks have been getting online revenue without cannibalizing their primetime viewers.

“As of now, the big winners appear to be the television networks,” Scherf said.

But said the movie industry has yet master Internet distribution, he said.

Scherf said his company estimates Internet movie services have only generated $99 million in 2007 compared to the $33 billion made in 2006 from box offices and DVDs. He said streaming movies have suffered because PCs have small screens, poor audio, and are uncomfortable to watch for long periods.

Scherf said companies like Apple, Netflix and Blockbuster are trying to figure out ways to stream their movies directly to TV sets. Apple already announced owners of the Apple TV device, which used to require a computer, can now stream movies directly to their TV’s.

Although TV companies are making money from the Internet, Scherf said music companies have been playing a zero-sum game by trading in-store sales for Internet revenue.

The Internet has taken power away from the record companies and allows artists to bypass the record companies altogether said Joshua Boltuch, co-founder of a music and social networking site Amie Street. One band that wrestled control from record companies is Radiohead, who sold its newest album, “In Rainbows,” directly to fans on their Web site. Boltuch said it is too early to herald the end of record labels.

“Only Radiohead could do what Radiohead did, most bands don’t have the millions of fans to make that work,” Boltuch said. “The hype of the death of the music labels was overblown.”

Boltuch said the biggest advantage of the Internet is it allows access to any artist anyone would want. That created another problem. He said the internet provides almost too many musicians to listen to making it hard for music fans to find new music.

“There is more choice than you can possibly imagine,” Boltuch said. “The new winners will be the people who can filter that, whoever can come up with the tools to navigate the infinite choices on the internet.”

Boltuch said Amie Street tries to solve this problem by letting users recommend songs to other users, producing a weekly newsletter with popular music and using a price system that raises the price of songs the more popular they are.

Calkins said MP3s are good for the average listener but hardcore music collectors will still go to stores and buy a CD or vinyl because of their superior sound quality.