Is the Internet world about to change? The Recording Industry Association of America RIAA is working with ISPs to act against pirate downloaders. Will this work? Already AT&T and Comcast amongst other US ISPs have written to persistent offenders and there's talk of a “three strikes and you're out” system where pirate downloaders and sharers will be disconnected.

In the UK letters have been sent to offenders and some recipients have responded welcoming the advice as they had not known about the illegal activity, most likely by their kids. Virgin Media owns 50% of the UK's fibre optic network and currently provides the highest download speeds of 50Mbps with plans to shortly offer up to 150Mbps. This kind of download speed is a real draw for downloaders. However Neil Berkett, Chief Executive of Virgin Media explained that they already throttle the bandwidth of certain users over a daily limit. They are also examine the nature of the data that users download. Mr Berkett says that Virgin has an obligation to manage the data and protecting the holders of intellectual property rights.

So perhaps a generation of kids who have grown up with “free” music will suddenly find that their world has changed. Just as the kids who used to copy from cassette to cassette in the 1970s lost their “free“ music when the CD came along (before writeable CDs arrived) perhaps today's kids are in for the same shock.

Up till now iTunes, eMusic et al have led the field when it comes to legal downloading but all that may be about to change. Enter Spotify, a simple concept that replaces the need to download or even pay for music. Touted to replace radio and your music collection Spotify allows you to stream music to your PC and put together playlists. The basic version will stick a few ads into the playlists but not too many and certainly less than radio. Premium versions remove the ads altogether.

Many people will still want to “own” their music and will continue to buy CDs. In my case I prefer this concept and although most of the music I listen to has been ripped, it has not been to low quality mp3s but to high quality lossless wma files at the highest bitrate. This is practically indistinguishable to the original CD and streets ahead of old fashioned 128mbs mp3s. You can't buy downloads of that quality online yet so even for ripped music you're better off with a CD and you have a backup of your purchase.

PRS Again

You can rely on the PRS to let down the music business. With musicians struggling just as much as everyone else in the credit crunch PRS have failed again to see reality.

Their latest failure to engineer a deal with YouTube is regrettable. PRS say they argue the case of the songwriters but once again fail to disclose which artists would be covered by a new deal with YouTube.

One reason that PRS won't disclose who will benefit from a new deal with YouTube is that apart from the PRS fat cats earning £400,000 a year the main beneficiaries will be the multi-millionaire artists whose videos will be most played on YouTube while the smaller musicians will see little.

Unfortunately all PRS will succeed in doing, in their aggressive approach with YouTube, is further drive people to piracy sending them to illegitimate video and music websites.

Interesting CD Gift Sets

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We've been thinking about how to make more interesting gift products and collectibles. CDs can be any price these days so when you give one as a gift it may not visually reflect the amount you spent. So, we've taken some of our most popular CDs and made them into sets. We started with a couple of 6 CD sets and have now expanded the range to twelve. Selling for £14.95 / €19.95 / $19.95 they represent great value for money and have been very successful since they went live on the website last week.

Save the music

We can save children, whales, birds even the world but can we save the music? Today's compressed music stored in low quality mp3 files is a reflection of how our music standards have slipped. Grab it now pirated downloads have much to answer for in this decline.

Try a test. Take some quality music, such as a classical CD album and rip it to mp3, then play it on your mp3 player. Now listen to the original CD on a reasonable quality CD player and you will see how modern music delivery methods and players rip the heart and soul out of your music. Only one quarter of the original album remains after you rip an album. Where did the rest go? Three quarters of the original soundtrack was ripped out having been deemed by your PC to be inconsequential. Your ears tell a different story.