Free Market > Government (again)

Remember the good old days?

Remember high school, when downloading music illegally with Napster or LimeWire opened up free access to just about anything you'd want to listen to, or burn onto a CD?

Remember college, when BitTorrent and other file-sharing programs did pretty much the same thing, so you could put all that free, illegal, music on your iPod and Zune?

Remember the government crack-down? The stories of college students sentenced to jail for downloading millions of songs?

Remember how, just like the war on drugs, all the public service announcements, anti-piracy warnings, and attempts to shut down fire-sharing networks never actually succeeded in stopping the flow of illegal tunes?

Well, now the market has done what the government never could.

According to a new report, illegal downloading of music has dropped off at a rate of 60% in the past two years. Why?? Did teenagers suddenly stop being interested in free music? Did all those government warnings about the evil that will befall you if you share music for free finally get some results?

No, and no.

As it turns out, the market has created something better than illegal mP3 download sites. Web-streaming sites like YouTube, Pandora, and Grooveshark are well on the way to replacing them. It's a good deal for everyone involved. For those of us who just want our music for free, we can now get it (and make customizable playlists as well), without opening up out computer to viruses and other threats from downloading a ton of music. For the music industry, they get paid (its not much, but more than they used to get from illegal downloads, which was nothing) by the websites themselves, who in turn make money from ad sales.

Amazing, isn't it?