An innovation has just hit the music industry that should be a new wake up call. It is called stationripper. Stationripper allows users to automatically store a digital version of every song played on their favorite internet radio station. This is like a high fidelity version of taping music from the radio. File sharing has actually become easier than Napster.
I played with stationripper over the weekend and was really impressed. It was like napster without having to think. With napster (or its cousins), you have to know what you are looking for. With stationripper, you give it a genre, it suggest internet radio stations that play that type of music, then it starts downloading all of the music. You just delete what you don't want.
This technology represents a trend that should cause the music industry to say, "If you can't beat them, join them." Stationripper is just another example of new technologies that make it ever easier for music lovers to capture music for free. The industry's ability to legally challenge music piracy/sharing technology is being thwarted by the explosive growth in innovations that allow it. When will the industry learn that everyone that has fought technology lost.
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