Music After the End of Net Neutrality
Net neutrality–the concept that data on the Internet should be treated equally by governments, ISPs and corporations–is in trouble. Recent developments seem to indicate that we’re moving into an era where we might end up getting charged differently for accessing certain content. It’s not the price of the content itself we’re talking about here; it’s the act of just accessing it.
This, obviously, could have huge repercussions (see this chart for a nightmare scenario that explains everything). And that includes music. Evolver.fm takes a look at some possibilities:
As for A), well, it looks like we’re going to find out what happens when ISPs can be more open about doing whatever they want to any kind of traffic, for any reason, because we seem to have decided that the internet isn’t a public utility like the phone lines through which some of it runs. To some, this means the internet will be broken. Net Neutrality has been struck down (here’s the best explanation we’ve seen), and if the FCC tries to save it, according to Susan Crawford, the expert cited by Re/Code (she declined to respond to a query for this piece), Republicans have sworn to dismantle the FCC.
So it’s looking like the internet might become a lot more like cable television, with only a few main channels dominating, because smaller entities won’t be able to pay ISPs to present their content — especially video or real-time applications — the way the big media companies will.
We’ll leave the rest of the philosophical, political, and economic implications of this to the rest of the internet, because people are talking about this everywhere, and focus instead on the music implications. So, what would an open, sanctioned lack of Net Neutrality do to the music apps and services that consumers seem to love, and which are only just getting started in terms of penetrating the mainstream? Here are some possibilities, implications, and observations:
Continue reading. This scares the shit out of me.
To be honest, I think music is unlikely to be affected dramatically by this. At least, not early on.
The big one is Netflix. The ISPs are going to start claiming that their high bandwidth usage is not “fair”, and price them out of competition over their own local offerings.