Download biz has to change, or digital sales will be playing a swan song

0 Comments | USA TODAY, February, 2007 | by Kevin Maney

Correction ran 2/15/2007: An Apple iPod music player was incorrectly identified in a photo caption Wednesday.

The online digital music business stinks.

ITunes, Rhapsody, Zune Store, Napster -- you name it. They're all failures.

The hype has people believing otherwise. Bloggers, tech writers and your friends who know more about computers than you do shout that iTunes is the best thing to happen to music since the microphone. Or maybe psychedelic drugs.

But it's just not true. Nearly six years after the introduction of iTunes and the iPod, online music has failed to interest the vast majority of the world's music consumers. Which is no doubt why Steve Jobs recently called for an end to copy-protection software on digital songs. Something...