Would busy consumers start from the search menu to buy music or eBooks in hot spots like train stations equipped with public wireless LANs? Consumers want simple access. Wouldn't they impulsively buy their books and music if recommendations from critics, sample pages from books, or trial sound files were sent by e-mail? As for music, a distribution system very close to broadcasting would be acceptable. In the world of UDAC, millions of encrypted music files are pooled at the hand of consumers. When a song is chosen, rights processing is completed in an instant, and the song can be available. This means that actual content acquisition can wait until the very last minute. It will take significantly more time to seek out and decide which music the user wants from the ocean of metadata (descriptions of music). What if agent software in the PDA chose your favorite music, impartially and appropriately, from the metadata. When consumers don't like the chosen music and skip them, the agent software will cleverly learn their likes and dislikes, and will select songs to match their tastes. Needless to say, there is a chance that agent software, which will put in new songs at the advertising requests of the record companies, might come out, even when the songs are not the users' favorites. Who knows, charismatic agent software might sharpen its insight, become more skillful than the charismatic clerks at record stores, and earn more brokerage commissions.

Copyright© 2002 Keitaide-Music Consortium.