BUSINESS
March,17 Friday 2007

MySpace, My Music (3/3)
With a new mainstream appeal, MySpace aims to become the online community of choice

MySpace's music service changes the game
MySpace is taking a completely different approach to digital music.

Unlike Apple or Microsoft, MySpace will sell unprotected* MP3 files. That means any user who buys a song from a band's page on MySpace can play the song on an iPod, a Zune player or any number of other MP3 players. Also, that song can be burned* to a disc endlessly.

"We have a strong belief that our users want unprotected songs," said Amit Kapur, director of business development for MySpace, "We feel this is a big test in the market."

That test will begin without music from the major record labels, which demand that distributor put strict digital rights* management tools on songs to limit copying.

Future needs
"It's clear to us we need to have major labels in the long run* ," Kapur said. "We will need to find a business model they will agree with."

Instead, MySpace will tap the estimated 3 million undiscovered bands that have profile pages and independent labels willing to waive digital rights restrictions. The artists and small labels will be able to sell songs from their own stores built into their MySpace pages. Fans, too, will be able to create a store on their pages to sell songs from their favorite bands.

All of the digital music action is focused on what remains a small, but growing market: Roughly 90 percent of music purchased is still sold on compact disc.

Convergence
Despite where one buys music, the player are likely to hold the key to who may eventually put a dent in* Apple's dominant market share. And many analysts still believe that mobile phones will one day be the music player of choice.

"All the parts that make up an MP3 player are pretty similar to the parts in an MP3-playing phone," Albert Lin of American Technology Research said. "There's certainly a reasonable market of people that want both a phone and music player in one device."

Vocabulary Focus
burn (v) --- to copy information, recoded music or images onto a compact disc
in the long run (idiom) --- at a time that is far away in the future
put a dent in (something)(idiom) --- to reduce the amount or level of something

Specialized Terms
unprotected (adj) --- 无版权保护的 describing a file that does not contain any programming to restrict its usage to certain devices
digital rights (n phr) --- 数码版权 the freedom for people to perform certain actions while using an electronic device such as a computer, and sometimes the Internet