The impact of Internet on some industry areas (music, publishing, press, cars, telecommunications)

CDs

This is one of the biggest existing e-business markets. The number of titles that can be stocked in a physical space is limited to several hundred, or thousands at the most, whereas the demand is for tens of thousands of titles. A store such as CD Now (http://www.cdnow.com) or Music Boulevard (http://www.musicboulevard.com) can offer a huge permanent choice of tens of thousands of titles. Apart from new releases and very well known artists, CD turnover is relatively slow, which is what prevents physical stores from financing a large stock. Thanks to data information exchange, online music CD stores' sites can offer a wide choice without having any stock : the order comes from the distribution site which in turn passes it on to the music publisher's stocks. In the case where the site which distributes the products also has a physical stock, the opportunity to sell throughout a wide geographical area allows him to improve stock management by increasing the turnover of a product. There are a large number of music publishers, but the smaller ones among them have enormous difficulties in developing their distribution network, in particular internationally. Internet allows them to reach music fans across the whole world. Internet is also helping to change the power balance within the industry, by challenging the existing economic structure. The possibility of downloading pieces of music will allow the small independent labels to become more visible : by creating community spaces dedicated to their artists on their site, or integrating themselves within other musical communities, they will be more easily able to reach and gain the loyalty of their customers. In addition, the MP3 format (which allows music lovers to copy CDs and distribute them throughout the network) poses a serious threat to the existing system of authors' copyright. Present legislation will probably be fundamentally reformed and the music publishers who manage to anticipate this revolution will be the best placed to benefit from the drastic changes.

The main players now and in the future
Aggregators such as CD NOW which distribute tens of thousands of titles.
Software agents which compare the aggregators' offers and the music lovers' opinions.
The big labels which will create communities.
The independent communities which will be created around current musicians.
Musicians who distribute their music on their own site with their own organisation.

Innovative services
Remote downloading systems for occasional listening or recording onto CDs.
Cultural sites : the number of community-type sites which have sprung up around cultural and particularly musical movements, thanks to the audience which they tap into.
Community-type sites : music fan-clubs, musical theme or trend sites.

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