KEY POINTS:
Phil downloads music for free. Yes, that's illegal most of the time and he knows it.
But he also spends a lot of money on records and figures he supports his favourite musicians that way.
He is typical of a lot of people nowadays who get music -
sometimes for free, sometimes not - from a number of different sources and have it in multiple formats.
He's also one of the many local music fans looking forward to the arrival of Apple's iTunes Music Store in New Zealand, which is expected any day now. It's been a long wait, with rumours of the store first surfacing nearly three years ago.
Apple Australia - which launched iTunes more than a year ago across the Tasman and has used the iTunes brand in its iPod marketing here - is, as always, refusing to say when it will finally give New Zealand iPod owners access to the world's biggest online music catalogue.
But many among the New Zealand music industry, including labels which have been in negotiations with Apple, have told TimeOut they expect iTunes before the end of the year, if not sooner. Coincidentally, the world's highest profile iPod marketeers are in in Auckland next week - U2 has its own edition of the Apple MP3 player.
"I'll get an iTunes account," says Phil, who is willing to pay for tracks from the world's biggest legal music download store. But, admits the 30-something Aucklander, it won't change his music-gathering habits dramatically. He gets most of his free music from MP3 and music blog sites like Hypemachine, a haven for rabid music fans which he likens to an old-fashioned fanzine. However, rather than the thousands of MP3s on his computer, it's his extensive vinyl collection that he rates as his pride and joy.
"I know the music I want, I look for it, download it, put it on my iPod, make a few mix CDs and the songs and artists that turn out to be five stars I inevitably buy on vinyl. But then again, I also want a digital copy so I can play it immediately, or take it to the beach," he says.
So for Phil, like many others, iTunes will be just another outlet to satisfy his appetite for new sounds rather than being a musical mecca. However, there's no denying the music store, with a catalogue of more than 3.5 million songs, is the brand leader.
Local music download sites, such as CokeTunes, Digirama and specialist New Zealand music website, Amplifier, have been in New Zealand for a few years now. But with iTunes on its way and Vodafone expanding its music service today, with the launch of online store www.vodafone.co.nz/music, the digital and mobile music market in New Zealand is about to boom.
The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (Rianz) is planning a new chart, which has a download component to it, for early next year.
Adam Holt, president of Rianz and head of record company Universal Music, believes the key issue for record companies, which for many years battled the digital music revolution (especially illegal downloads), is that the consumer is more interested in music than ever before. And, with the introduction of iTunes here, it "will scratch that itch that has been there for two or three years" and promote this interest even more.
"Our vision is to give the consumer access to legal music anyway they want it - online, mobile, CD, and it's not mutually exclusive either. You'll find people who are buying online quickly because they love a song they've just heard on a TV show, or the opposite, they love the third single so they buy the [physical] album.
"There will be people out there who only buy digital or physical, but our view is the consumer is going to buy anyway, and they will consume it differently, either through the album or by cherry-picking tracks."
For example, Holt says when Chasing Cars by second division British band Snow Patrol featured on Grey's Anatomy it became one of iTunes' biggest selling singles.
He doesn't anticipate any sharp decline in CD sales but admits that over the next five years the digital market will grow considerably. And as iTunes has proved in different countries around the world - Australia being the prime example - it lifts the profile of digital music. That bodes well for the local music download sites that will compete with iTunes.
Shaun Davis, co-founder of Digirama, says it will be interesting to see what impact Apple's store has. He's also quick to point out that iTunes is not the market leader in every country it is in - in Germany it is only the third biggest download site.
Davis says Apple's marketing, branding and the iTunes/iPod compatibility gives it a big advantage. Songs downloaded from websites like Digirama and CokeTunes, which use the WMA format, cannot be transferred directly to an iPod. However, Amplifier sells iPod-playable New Zealand tracks.
"But," says Davis, "we've got a lot of new players coming out that support the Microsoft format, like Zune [the MP3 player launching this month in the United States as a rival to the iPod]. But we can only do so much and we're just one store in New Zealand and there are 300 stores around the world competing with iTunes who are in a similar boat."
In a brief statement CokeTunes said the introduction of iTunes would provide another option for music lovers and stimulate the online music sector.
Traditional music retailers have suffered in recent years with the decline in CD sales because of illegal downloading and the digital music boom. However, Roger Marbeck from music shop Marbecks, which has been trading for 72 years, believes iTunes coming to New Zealand and the growth in legal music downloads will enhance CD sales.
"Digital downloads are fine, but if you really want a cracker version of an album you're going to need the real thing to play on a decent stereo and [Marbecks] deal more in that specialist area. That's why shops like ourselves and Real Groovy are doing well."
He recently sold his business to national chain The CD and DVD Store. While he didn't want to go into his reasons for selling, he says it wasn't because of a slump in CD sales. Rather, he "didn't have the bucks" to take the shop to the next level, which the new owners plan on doing in the near future.
Marbeck has seen many evolutions in the music-buying market and believes it's a matter of music retailers adapting yet again to compete with the likes of Apple.
Rianz chief executive Campbell Smith has already sampled the joys of iTunes care of an American credit card. He's still amazed at the number of tracks available and the gems you can find in the store's vast back catalogue.
But for Smith, it's not just about iTunes. He foresees a refreshed appetite for music in New Zealand with the increasing number of ways to access it.
"It's wrong for people to steal music. We don't need to say much more than that. But it makes it easier for [the record industry] when we can say please don't do that, here's a viable, legal, and safe alternative to stealing. Until recently it's been hard for us to do that.
"In the record business the consumer is king and you have to be able to make product accessible. To be able to do that in more ways than we have in the past is good for us and them."
The bottom line: There's more music out there than ever before and it's easier than ever to get it.
