Why such a boom of music streaming sites? What is a music streaming sites? : A streaming music site is a free and unlimited site of music listening in compensation there is many or not (It depends on the site) ads. We can have access in songs only if we are connected to Internet. We cannot download illegally the available songs unless to be cunning. It offers the function of search for the site enable to find a song by title, artist and album. Mostly we can sign in the site to create its playlists and so find easily his favorite’s songs. The late 1990s and early 2000s, internet users saw:   

greater network bandwidth, especially in the last mile increased access to networks, especially the Internet use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML

These advances in computer networking combined with powerful home computers and modern operating systems made streaming media practical and affordable for ordinary consumers. Standalone Internet radio devices are offering listeners a "no-computer" option for listening to audio streams. In France the first one met a success was blogMusik. It had been closed in February, 2007 by the SACEM (“Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique”) for reasons of violation of copyright. For its reopening it changed name to become Deezer : the first French site of free listening of on-line music to have found a legal agreement with a society) of management of copyright, in this particular case with the SACEM. The advertising incomes pay the artists and all the legal successors.

Deezer : Deezer is a free and unlimited service of listening of on-line music appearing in the form of a web site. It was create by 2 French (Daniel Marhely and Jonathan Benassaya) in 2007. Since 2007 Deezer signed agreements of use with 3 of 4 Majors: Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and recently Warner Music Group (not EMI Group for the moment) or independent record label (Ed Banger Records, Kitsuné Music to quote French labels). In 2008 Deezer counts more than 3 million identified members. Multilingual, the site is proposed in 16 languages today. It is the first site of listening of free and legal on-line music. The site begins to become social with the creation of the functions friends, friends’ playlist, fans... We can also incorporate a Deezer mini-player on its personnal Web site or on its Facebook profile to share more its playlists. Since June, 2008 a new function appeared: the blind test which we can create or try. It looks like the blind test on IPod but with a music database which can be chosen. Once create it becomes accessible has all the Deezer community. On September 18th, news of the official blog of Deezer indicates that the directory of the site is 3, 7 million titles the biggest legal and free audio library. The streaming sites would announce the end of the peer to peer?

Advantages of music streaming sites compared with peer-to-peer networks: 1. The ease : With the streaming everything is simpler it is enough to click the link and the song dashes almost automatically. Not need of software contrary in p2p. Not need of setting his box or to wait that the song is complete to hear it. It is really accessible for all the persons even the non computer-literate person. It is one of strong points of the streaming. 2. The confidentiality : Streaming, it is also the confidentiality. The listened songs are saved only temporarily on your computer. They take place in a temporary directory of your hard drive disk which will be erased has every new session or renewal of your IP address. When you download, the contents are on your hard drive disk, and during the download, the authorities can track down you with your IP address. 3. The security : By listening to some music on a streaming Website we also are reliable to do not fall on a virus very numerous on peer to peer networks. Furthermore it’s definitive to fall on the good file and not on a fake or on a pornographic film (not for a song all the same). 4. The Speed of Use : On one hand the song downloads at once and we do not thus waste time. On the other hand in view of the fact that we do not save songs on his hard drive disk allows us to save space. We also have access at an audio library which we could not store in our own hard drive disks. 5. Sharing The sharing takes here a sense different from the one that we imply with the peer to peer. We want to speak about sharing of culture, about style of life, about ideals. Indeed with the numerous possibilities that offer the sites of streaming we get closer to social sites as Facebook with the notions of groups, fan... We can also listen all these songs legally and gratuitously during party with friends and so share these new finds or the new song which we fall for.

All this confer a net advantage on the streaming compared with the peer to peer. But there is a problem it is that we cannot put on his mp3 player or his mobile phone the songs which we listen to streaming unless having a mp3 player having a Wi-Fi or 3GP connection. This problem is going to settle it in the years to come with the making available to the masses of the Wi-Fi on mp3 player and the 3G on mobile phone. But it is even a little bit expensive at the moment.

The various audio formats for audio streaming: There is really a wide choice of format which we can use for the audio streaming but they is not all so good.

 Flash: The format the most used for the audio streaming is the size flash format. We find it on Deezer, RadioBlogClub, Lastfm, and Pandora... There is only 2 bit rates used : 64 or 128 Kbits/secs knowing that more the bit-rates is high better is the quality. 128Kbits/secs corresponds to the lowest but also the most common value of bits rates on peer to peer networks.

 Mp3: Unlike what we could believe it is not widely the format the most used for the audio streaming. Only certain sites use it as mix upload. Indeed this format caused numerous problems in the 2000’s with peer to peer Networks such as Napster and it is very easy to get back them on sites.

 Ogg Vorbis: It’s an Open-Source audio format more successful in quality terms and compression ratio than the Mp3, but less popular than this last one. Doubtless because OggVorbis is relatively recent, the version 1.0 being available since July 19th, 2002 (Mp3: 1995).

 WMA: Wma (Windows Media Audio) is an audio codec developed by Microsoft. BBC World has employed WMA for its Internet Radio streaming service. The audio format WMA offers the possibility of protecting from the encoding the files of release against the illegal copy by a technique named Digital rights management (DRM).

The large number of available codec and the fact of being able to use most of them on the most used operational systems (Windows, Mac Os and Linux) allow a big broadcasting of music streaming sites.

Conclusion: Even if the peer to peer had advantages (in particular the fact of not needing very powerful server because all the files are stored in users hard drive disks) it is the technology today which has more and more difficulty to compete with streaming. It is true for the audio streaming but even more for the video streaming with Websites as YouTube (2nd search engine on internet) or Daily Motion. But for the moment we find of audio streaming Web sites legal and free but not still of legal and free Web sites of streaming video. There is indeed the Video On Demand (V.O.D) but it is a paying system and the user prefer to watch any advertising that to pay. We can thus wonder to know that is going to become the peer to peer, if it is going to continue has to exist or if on the contrary it become fewer and fewer used. We can also envisage a new technology based on the streaming and the peer to peer. A streaming which the necessary files would be stored in the user’s hard drive disks, but coded in order to make them available only by going on Internet. It will be necessary to redo an English project in 3-4 years to know that it how all that evolved…. :-)