Music on the Internet: Legal or illegal? *

The habit of downloading music on the Internet has been growing year-by-year for several reasons, mainly due to the rapid and easy methods for obtaining a song and listening to it in different formats anywhere. However, the music industry has suffered a "knockout" on its revenue, which is shrinking due to this spread of music piracy thanks to street vendors and the Internet, with websites of content exchange.

In fact, the typical Internet music customer has adapted much faster than the music industry to the various music formats and other digital media such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, iPod, Digital TV and the Internet offerings such as Web Radio, Mobile Radio, iTunes and Video. The music industry has not adapted fast enough to the business model of the digital world, and it has paid the price for this lag by allowing room for a culture of “unofficial” downloads of their music. Unofficial downloading, which is basically illegal, has decreased the size of the official music industry to only 30 percent of its size ten years ago.

Recently, music companies have understood that customers are willing to pay a fair price for digital music, which can be recorded on all available devices without concern for formats, rights and usage permission. The reality of the music world today is that many people have stopped buying CDs and are making their purchases of music online, not because they don’t want to pay, but simply because their habits and desires have changed. Online music is easy, convenient, comfortable and portable. The iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 are great examples of the success of online music.

It is estimated that in 2012, the worldwide sales of music online will overtake CDs. Brazil is one of the countries where the legal music business suffers the most from piracy. This is happening for one simple reason - there is no easy, accessible service fitting the consumer’s needs that sells digital music. As a result, artists and entrepreneurs have begun investing in different online models to provide songs that may cost as little as 10 cents as a way of boosting sales and avoiding piracy. Some online service companies have also developed plans that allow users to listen to unlimited music via streaming, which is a way to distribute multimedia information over the Internet through packets. One such company is Sonora, from the portal Terra, the largest service selling digital music, with 40 percent of the market share to date.

Last year, sales of "mobile" music were identified as a big gamble for the Brazilian market. However, now it is being seen as an example of the digital music industry that has the potential to reverse the flood of pirated downloading. Another example of the digital music industry’s transformation is YouTube, which reigns supremely as the music source for consumers. In the past six years, YouTube has helped catapult the careers of such artists as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, whose fans clicked a million times on their videos. So, there is space for everybody in the digital music world; however, the key to success for artists and the music industry as a whole will be the creativity they can develop in reaching consumers.

* Article published on Curitiba in English.

Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre are more digital cities

The important cities like Rio de Janeiro or Brasília (the federal capital) are not necessarily the most digital cities in the country. This is what the research Brazil Index of Digital Cities released by CPqD (Center for Research and Development Telebrás) in partnership with Momento Editorial. According to the research, the target is to measure the level of digitalization of Brazilian municipalities, the most advanced and that occupy the first four positions of the ranking are Belo Horizonte (MG), Curitiba (PR), Porto Alegre (RS) and Vitoria (ES).

In a statement sent to media by CPqD, explains that "digital cities have different maturity stages, or levels of urbanization in relation to the availability and use of Information Technology, be the citizen, government, company or companies". To assess at what stage the municipalities are, the CPqD created a methodology that takes into account a series of criteria, divided into nine categories, related not only to the technological infrastructure (presence of primary equipment, bandwidth, coverage, etc.), but also the availability of digital services and resources to accessibility, for example, for people with physical disabilities or illiterate.

Based on this criteria, a questionnaire was generated with 15 questions which were answered by more than one hundred municipalities in all regions of Brazil. Of this total, 75 questionnaires were validated by the Momento Editorial staff and the contributing authors, after checking the data and its junction with information from the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) and IBGE (Institute Brazilian Geography and Statistics). The methodology also provides a scoring system for each category of criteria.

Here is the ten cities ranked in the top position of the Brazil Index for Digital Cities and their scores:

1º - Belo Horizonte (MG) - 360 points
2º - Curitiba (PR) - 352 points
3º - Porto Alegre (RS) - 349 points
4º - Vitória (ES) - 347 points
5º - Ibirapuitã (RS) - 340 points
5º - Jundiaí (SP) - 340 points
6º - Campinas (SP) - 339 points
7º - Santos (SP) - 338 points
7º - São Carlos (SP) - 338 points
8º - Tarumã (SP) - 335 points
9º - São Paulo (SP) - 334 points
10º - Tauá (CE) - 332 points

For more info, visit www.wirelessmundi.inf.br and www.cpqd.com.br.

Orkut: What are the directions of the social network most famous in Brazil?

Many users have already bet to say that Orkut has its days numbered. But we must not forget that Google's social network were largely responsible for this craze caught once here in Brazil! With rapid growth since its launch, Orkut needed only for four years, in 2008, surpass its main rival at the time, MySpace.

Today's most popular network among Brazilians still leads here: 43 million active users in the country. But now the "enemy"is another, and the threat is great. Facebook just arrived, and has nearly 600 million users worldwide compared to only 85 million of Orkut.

The point is that all these people who entered the network of Mark Zuckerberg, only about 2% are in Brazil. But this scenario is changing and draws attention. A while here, many fled Orkut and migrated to new services. So much so that a recent survey by Ibope Media shows that half of Orkut users used fewer social network in 2010. Since Facebook has its version in Portuguese, which made ​​it easier for people to use the site as a new social networking.

Other surveys show that the audience of Orkut is nearly parked for about one year in Brazil. Between September 2009 and May 2010, the increase in the number of unique visitors per month was 3.5%, and during the same period the rival Facebook has advanced 102%. Based on these data, its already expected that Facebook in Brazil will overtake Orkut still this year ... will be?

Just last year, Orkut has made more than 50 service changes. Recently they changed the first time the logo of social networking, and Google also promises plenty of novelty to the end of 2011.
Well, all we can do is wait to see what will really happen.