The days when you could only listen to a song if you heard it on the radio, or if you had bought the artist’s record, audio-cassette or CD, are almost forgotten.
What the music lovers of the past used to pay to enjoy, is now being taken for granted, like being able to play a favourite song for free on a platform like YouTube.
This means that if copyright owners were to decide to charge users for every time they listen to a song online, consumers would most probably rebel to such a requirement.
How did it come to this?
Or more importantly, what is being done to make consumers distinguish between what they have a right to access as web users and what online privileges they have acquired for themselves over the past decade?
It has been recently reported by the BBC that music publishers are to create a song rights database which is expected to give what is due to copyright owners in the business.
What this essentially means is that song writers and producers will get paid each time their piece is being played on this database, whether via a computer or a mobile.
This online music catalogue is backed by leading names in the industry, such as EMI Music Publishing and online music stores like iTunes and Amazon and is expected to launch within two years.
Executive vice president at EMI Music Publishing UK, Neil Gaffney, commented:
“One of the complexities for new services is people say they didn’t know who to pay.”
“It gets rid of one of the fundamental issues and means we can turn our attention to those people who use music illegally,” he added.
What is arguably the most important result of creating such a database is that it will help move the process along of licensing artists’ work for the online world.
Current intellectual property laws have been defined as outdated as Prime Minister David Cameron observed last year, saying that the coalition government will work towards making “them fit for the internet age”.
What will the implications of such a shift be and will web users quietly accept the fact they cannot stream music for free any longer?