Wireless Media and Super-Portability: what will ubiquitous wifi mean for the music industry?

iPods revolutionized the music industry, making it possible to carry hundreds or thousands of songs in your pocket, but emerging technologies are now promising to serve up your complete personal music library, wirelessly. What will this new level of portability -- or place-shifting -- mean for the consumption of music, and how will it affect artist compensation?

Whitney Broussard Owner, Whitney Broussard Consulting
Bryan Calhoun Owner and Founder, Label Management Systems
Jim Griffin CEO, Onehouse
Skip Pizzi Manager, Technical Policy, Microsoft Corp.
Patrick Sullivan Principal, RightsFlow

04:30 PM EST - BC: What do you think are some of the bold new initiatives going on now?

JG: Discussion of the application of the carter phone principle. It was applied to the telephone networks at one time. Essentially said, if the network did no harm, you can get it from anywhere. If wireless networks can be open networks is an exciting concept.

SP: The ymac's deployment, we'll start seeing more ubiquitous network connections on a wider scale. This will effect internet radio. When you can make internet radio portable, it then serves like terrestrial radio. Another area is mobile multimedia, devices are being developed that also have digital receivers. "Media flow" devices actually receives digital TV and radio, but not through phone network, but will be through a separate receiver. Moving music directly to an handheld device, has a lot of untapped potential. Could be an impulse buy or people who don't have computers a way for them to access music. In the next generation, you will be able to dl straight to the handheld. That is a big inflection point that reflects this industry.

WB: What is really interesting to me is how cell phones are used to interact in real time. For example, I've worked with Verizon with their tours and have seen how cell phones can interact with shows. People videotaping parts of the show and send it to their friends and help spread the word about the band--this is something that has just been touched.

04:40 PM EST - BC: With this new technological world, is there even a place for terrestrial radio?

SP: It's definitely changing. It's really in their game to lose if they don't adapt to the changes.

JG: If we change the way we use radio, we will listen to what we want without changing the station at all. On a technical matter, there is no need to allocate spectrum at all.