Napster -- friend or foe?

Here's a map of different ways this struggle could end:

1) Napster goes away, business as usual resumes: The RIAA wins in court, the Napster servers that hook users up with one another get shut down and the record companies' schemes for copy-protected digital music distribution become the marketplace standard.

2) Napster prevails, business as usual resumes: The industry's doomsayers prove to be wrong, and -- just as happened with the movie industry's fears that VHS taping would destroy its bottom line -- the proliferation of online MP3 swapping only expands the overall music market, as people find more music to love and spend more money on it.

3) Napster prevails, the music-industry-as-we-know-it collapses, and that turns out to be a bad thing: The talent pool of music makers dries up, as the superstars of yesterday end up begging on street corners and those of tomorrow shun music for careers as stockbrokers and software developers.

4) Napster prevails, the music-industry-as-we-know-it collapses, and that turns out to be a good thing: Record-company executive suites depopulate as artists cut out the middleman and forge direct relationships with fans. Superstars dwindle, the Grammys perish and music consumers choose from a richer, broader range of interesting, creative musical alternatives, while a flourishing ecosystem of commercial and fan-based Web sites and online services helps people find the music they like.

Here's why I think scenario 1 is highly unlikely: The millions of MP3 users aren't going to stop using their chosen format just because the music industry tries to shove another one down their throats. The fate of schemes like Divx suggests how difficult it is for the entertainment business to force consumers to adopt an unpopular standard. And regardless of what happens to Napster in court, the Napster concept can't be unthought.

Already there are other Napster-like services (readers wrote in to tell me about CuteMX and the Mac-oriented Macster). And the debut of Gnutella -- an open-source-style Napster-like exchange program that's fully distributed, so there's no central server to sue or shut down -- suggests just how impossible it will be to put out this populist fire.

About the only scenario I can imagine that could truly wreck Napster and Napster-like online swap meets is the prospect of massive pollution of the data pool itself -- devious, but certainly possible. It's the nature of Napster-type networks to keep duplicating the same files, and you can't "preview" the files, so if opponents of Napster manage to infect the online song libraries with mislabeled files (I wanted to download the Clash and instead I got Barry Manilow!) or bad versions of songs, filled with noise or skips, users might get exasperated.

My money is on scenario 2 in the short term and 4 for the long haul. At first, the spread of Napster and its clones will stimulate demand for all sorts of "midlist" music that the record industry itself has done a lousy job of promoting, and the music companies will cry over Napster's success all the way to the bank.

Over time, though, I think that a growing number of artists will question their own participation in a system that really doesn't serve the great majority of them. They'll begin to experiment with more direct musician-to-fan schemes -- not simply the sell-more-T-shirts approach mocked by artists in our article last week, but serious new ideas for generating revenue for musicians: ideas like annual fan subscriptions, charges for early access to new music or special deals on collector's items, using online networking to boost attendance at shows and no doubt many others that I can't yet imagine.

The one piece yet to fall into place for utopian scenario 4 to come true is an easy-to-use micropayments scheme -- some nearly universal online system for musicians (and anyone else) to be able to collect very small sums from customers without incurring prohibitive overhead costs. Once such technology becomes available, you can kiss the existing order of the industry goodbye.

In this kind of future, won't the total dollar value of the music industry decline? Quite possibly. But whom is that a tragedy for, exactly? Executives of and investors in music companies, perhaps. Artists? Fewer will make a killing, but more, quite likely, will make a living.

Such a technology-driven transformation of the business landscape -- scary though it may sound to those prospering today -- could well mean more choice for consumers and a healthier environment for the creators of music. Even if you're not a music fan, you probably want to pay attention here, because the same forces upsetting the music world will sooner or later start transforming everything else.

And for those of you out there getting ready to e-mail me and say, "So you're a writer -- how would you feel if it was your industry and livelihood at risk?" all I can say is, that's no "if." It's already happening here in the "information industry," where newspapers are under fire, Web sites (including this one) have learned to give away their goods for free and notions of professionalism are under fire from un- or ill-paid amateurs using the Net to distribute their own kind of reporting.

I don't know for sure how journalism will fare any better than I can predict with certainty what will happen to music. There's one thing I'm quite sure of: It's stupid to pretend that new technologies and distribution schemes won't change these fields -- and wanting to turn back the clock, however tempting, is not only immature but futile.

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