This month saw a good amount of coverage on past and future music listening and purchasing practices.

Hypebot covered two points on user data this month. One discussed how UK music buyers prefer CDs to digital, and another discussed music sharing data.

As for preferring CDs, it is difficult to imagine this to be fully true, but in reviewing the comments to this piece perhaps there is a compromise scenario here where when you download an album you can opt to get the CD at cost (w shipping) or for a few bucks more.  This guarantees ownership in a way that digital downloads do not, and can provide access to album art, lyrics etc.  After all, with the economy being what it is, consumers more than ever appreciate the value of what they are paying for.  Digital downloads have zero incremental costs to artists, where CDs have more actual hard costs, so purchasing downloads and paying a bit more for a CD too at the time of sale could be a great way to create renewed interest in music purchasing.

Interestingly, these thoughts are consistent with what Apple is beginning to do with record labels.  Apple is collaborating with EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music Group with an eye towards creating an interactive bundle on their iTunes shore that includes material such as liner notes, lyric sheets and photos. The “interactive book” would apparently let users play songs without having to return to the iTunes software.

The goal is to spark sales of digital albums, “with a nod to the music-listening habits of a bygone era.”

The project, code-named ‘Cocktail’, has a September launch date.

As for music sharing data, Hypebot’s summary of  a “TEMPO Digital Music Discovery & Purchase Process” report from Ipsos MediaCT shows that peer-to-peer still dominates as a new music source for music listeners.  iTunes, Yahoo Music and Myspace Music still pay a very active role as well.  MTV’s Music Network is right there with Myspace, though, so considering their Rock Band efforts and past savvy marketing  over the past 20+ years, they should be considered a potentially important destination as well.

As we look to the future, The New Rockstar Philosophy smartly reiterated this month that the future of music will likely be in streaming, where people pay a fee for access to a large pool of music and a portion of those fees would be distributed to the artists based on play data.  After all, Rhapsody is just behind some of the larger players as a music destination source in Ipsos Media’s report.

As NRP accurately stated:  “You’d still need to promote an artist to get the streaming hits …. since there will be a lot of competition for streams if it’s open to any artist, but that’s where marketing comes in.”