When I hear pundits declare the inevitability of legal P2P services, I think to myself, “but what about the customer experience?” They say that the economics of P2P music distribution means that P2P wins. If you’re talking about free music, maybe. But when it comes to paying for music, I’ll take a centralized music service any day, where music files are hosted and managed by the service provider. I want my music when I want it, and I don’t want my experience interrupted because someone in Des Moines turned off their computer. I like knowing that the quality of the file will be consistent, and that I’ll have ready access to music information, message boards, and the other things that make a good music service satisfying to use. I am paying for it, after all.

Remember the excitement over e-books? Here was another technology that made things easier for the distributor but not for the customer. The publisher gets around the nuisance of printing books and fighting for shelf space, while the customer gets to worry about reading devices, laptop battery life, etc. When it comes to consumer experience, the print book wins hands down. So it is with music services. Unless P2P services can match the customer experience of the best online music services, they will be anything but inevitable.