The lesson of commerce in the Internet Era—from Amazon through Napster through the iTunes store—has been that consumer habits and expectations have changed radically. The general public has intuited that the Internet and digital technology enable a world of unlimited selection and instant gratification. If your business model stands in the way of that, well, consumers will just go around you. It’s a lesson that the music industry failed to learn from Napster, and it’s a lesson that media companies are having to re-confront again and again, even down to the present day.
