How The Music Industry Got Shaken Up

 Here at LeWeb there's a lot of talk about Deezer, a music streaming service that has the goal of going global. They made a splash with the news yesterday that they would be launching in many countries before the United States, arguably a first for companies of any type. While I have doubts whether Deezer will succeed, I'll save that for another post - right now I want to comment on the turnaround of the music industry in the past year or so.People got used to paying for songs on iTunes, yes. Apple reduced the cost of music and made it easy for people to buy it online. But nevertheless, music piracy has kept increasing over the past decade. It's obvious that paying per song was not going to reduce the amount of privacy, because people like the idea of not having a limit on how many songs they can listen to.But in the past year, we've seen an explosion of music services like Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, and Pandora. They've been multiplying their total user numbers by many times, and expanding over the globe. I believe the music industry has been fundamentally changed over the past year, for a few reasons.Firstly, the music industry has never before existed in a subscription format. People either bought CD's, or listened to the radio which was advertising-funded. Perhaps CD subscription services were an exception, but they are very different. Recently, we've seen the vast majority of people start paying by subscription (10euros a month, or thereabouts) for music. This is a fundamental change that has allowed the music industry to be revolutionizedThe other difference is convenience. Music streaming used to be a hassle and a pain. You had to go to a website, go through an extensive sign-up process, and then wait for ages while a song buffered. Now, it's incredibly easy to sign up, and the user experience is fantastic. You can browse through music easily, and play songs instantly (literally).So: a new payment model and an easier system of browsing and playing music. I think those are the two key aspects that have caused this change in the music industry. And the change has been huge. This year, for the first time in the past decade, people are saying that there has been a decrease in the amount of music privacy. That's huge.What other industries can those two things be applied to so that they can be shaken up? I believe the payments industry itself could be changed, as well as the journalism media industry. They've remained the same for a while, don't work particularly well, and are ready for change. I personally believe they should focus on the two things the music industry did in order to change - a new payment model and a different way of receiving information or functionality.What do you guys think?