The post-file sharing era?

Once again the Economist has a thoughtful perspective on the challenges facing the music business. This piece points to the rise of distributors who provide music for free (but legally) by monetizing the audio streams in a variety of creative ways:

The past year has seen rapid growth of digital music services that accept the post-Napster consensus that music should be free, or at least appear to be free. The companies involved range from Google, which now facilitates music streaming from its search page in America, to Nokia, which bundles access to a music-download service with some of its mobile phones. “The next big thing is a dozen different things,” says Thomas Hesse of Sony Music Entertainment.

Dave Kusek at Future of Music blog has been sharing his version of this “streaming-everything” vision for some time.