There are other ways to generate revenue from the the content of copyrighted intellectual property. Music has been a hot-button item in this subject area, and the recording industry has been trying to figure out ways to combat the illegal downloading or peer to peer file sharing the propogates the illegal distribution of music.
There are several emerging start-up companies that have come up with a new model for distributing music that takes away user's incentive to share music illegally. The new model is that of a subscription service- a flat rate allowing the user, based on their subscription level, to access limited or unlimited amounts of music for download and unlimited streaming music from their computer or enabled mobile devices. The incentive to pirate the music is gone because now the user has access to all the music he or she desires without using any peer to peer software, eliminating the reciprocity inherent in peer to peer networks (eg. I'll let you download if you let me upload) that perpetuates illegal file sharing.

Business Models such as Spotify and BSkyB might be the future of online music distribution if they undergo some healthy refinement to hammer out some of the flaws in their models. The ideal new model will be set up in such a way that users don't actually maintain, own, or need to access sharable music files. Instead, they can pay a flat rate that allows them constant access to an expansive library of music that they can access as they please (based on subscriber level.) By doing this we can maintain some of the legacy models such as in-store CD sales and redirect the online segment of the market from one based on piracy to one based on subscription services.



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