The impact of digital technology on the musical economy has been profound. From its production, reproduction, distribution, and consumption, the advent of MP3 and the use of the Internet as a medium of distribution has brought about a significant transformation in the way that music is made, how it is purchased and listened to, and, significantly, how the musical economy itself is able to reproduce itself.
In the late 1990s the obscure practice of 'ripping' tracks from CDs through the use of compression programmes was transformed from the illegal hobby of a few thousand computer...