Record company bosses looking out over their penthouse balconies towards the horizon are all turning tail and running for cover from the approaching storm, and the size of the cloud that is amassing overhead. Muttering the word, "spotify", to themselves and rocking back and forth while staring blankly at their computer screens, they know, the end is nigh.

The music industry as we know it may be on its last legs. The days of vinyl records, tapes, cd's and even i-tunes will soon pass into the annals of history. The advent of programmes like Spotify, which offer extensive and up to date catalogues of music, instantly, legally, and for free, could render the possession, and therefore the sale of music, completely redundant in a few years time.

This is a nightmare vision of the world for the music industry as we know it, which has arguably been punch-drunk for a couple of years now. Although it has recently come out swinging, with a high profile law-suit of one of the web's biggest torrent portals, The Pirate Bay, and the removal of many music videos in the UK from YouTube due to a disagreement over compensation, one feels that the advent of Spotify in particular may be the knockout punch that finally makes the industry question its tactics for the fight, unless of course, seeing stars is now the only thing it's good for.

Soon people will be able to access whatever they want whenever they want it from central databases stored on the net. This is the future of the web, and therefore the future for all your electronic media needs. Your future is called, "the Cloud".

It is no surprise that all the major players have been working on their ideas for "cloud computing" for a few years now. Google, Microsoft, Intel and Yahoo are all determined to remain firmly in the eye of a storm that will lay waste to so many of the music industry's established business models.

Gone will be the days of overpaying bands like U2, whose new album was leaked and illegally downloaded 100,000 times before it was added to Spotify's catalogue a week before its release, free to listen to as many times as you wish!for free!

Independent musicians may simply have to play more live shows, or use their brains to find new ways of making money, even though at present we are still a little way off from this vision of the future becoming a reality.

For now, Spotify is purely a computer-based service, and is not available on portable devices such as mobile phones. I suggest you use this period of transition to mourn the loss of sleeve artwork, and the sense of ownership you still feel over your favourite tunes. For when mobile phone and Wi-Fi broadband technology converges, and it will, a new era of instantaneous media will be at your fingertips!well, metaphorically speaking at least. 

(Owen Hughes)