Now, <em>That's</em> Entertainment Technology

Trying instead of buying has already proliferated on MySpace, where users embed music widgets of their favorite songs on their profiles, allowing others to listen. Not to be outdone, Facebook is preparing its own "music platform" with similar functionality, adding the ability for users to buy songs they like through iTunes. Both sites allow (or will soon allow) artists to create official pages to promote their music, and with tens of millions of users using iTunes, it won't be long before social networks become huge outlets for music sales. If the record labels can keep civil relationships with Apple, platform-based buying might be another way the boardroom crowd can keep profiting from the dorm room crowd.

Music fans who introduce new bands to their friends may also stand to make a dollar off their efforts. Producer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas has monetized the small world of music widgets by volunteering to share revenue with users who embed his widget-based music store in their blogs or sites. His program, called Musicane, was released to coincide with his newest album release in late August. The widget also allows users to upload and sell their own music, which can also be embedded for sale on others' sites.

Radio

What is the future of radio? Frankly, it's bleak.

While traditional radio has tried to revamp itself by adding "HD" channels, the music that arrives over the airwaves is still sub-CD quality and is littered with commercials. That satellite radio hasn't delivered old-time radio its death knell is the fault of no one but the satellite companies. Eventually, XM and Sirius subscription prices will drop with costs, and FM radio will lose the advantage of being free. As built-in MP3 and satellite support grace more cars as stock equipment, car buyers will finally breathe a sigh of relief at never again having to hear local commercials exhorting them to buy cars.

While FM may die, listeners will still benefit from the concept of radio – that is, someone else making a playlist, exposing them to new music, and doing it 24/7. Any radio outside a car will likely be heard through fast, high-quality broadband. Enter CBS's Last.fm, which communalizes the process of playlist creation and allows users to embed playlists on their personal sites. You can also "tag" songs you hear that you like, saving them for later purchasing, which can also be done through the site.

A similar concept will gain popularity with other streaming widgets like iLike for Facebook. The iLike application streams songs you like and also displays what your friends are listening to, localizing the notion of radio to expose listeners to new music from your group of friends.

The most obvious successors to radio are services like Pandora, which provides an intelligent, personalized radio experience that can measure a song's attributes (like tonality and syncopation) to suggest other songs a listener might like. Once combined with more intuitive purchasing options, personalized Internet radio will provide a service plain old radio never dreamed of. It's likely that one of these services will expand to ubiquity, gaining support in Wi-Fi-enabled MP3 devices that will let listeners roam their cities or campuses with uninterrupted Internet radio. Of course, for that to happen, municipalities will have to make good on promises of free Wi-Fi, and in many cities that remains a cost-prohibitive and obstacle-ridden process.

Film

As with CDs, the notion of a tangible disc is quickly losing its utility, and digital, downloadable replacements for the DVD are an eventuality. Granted, movies are massive data files, and downloading a movie still isn't as quick or painless as it will be in a broader-band future. But already, companies like NetFlix are offering PC-based Internet movie rentals, and iTunes allows you to buy movies from its store and save them on your Apple TV or iPod. That's great, but until the Web is better at tossing around 8 or 12GB files, there will still be a need for discs. Which disc that will be is debatable; until HD-DVD and Blu-Ray duke it out for the title of DVD successor, viewers can occupy themselves figuring out which movies to buy or rent in the first place. And they can use new services like B-Side to do it.

B-Side's ostensible purpose is to offer exposure for indie films that don't get the PR blitz that comes with a major studio release. The site calculates each of its movies' popularity by both user ratings and real-life festival viewers' reactions, assuring that movies are ranked by both common plebes and movie buffs alike. The best part: since most of these films aren't big studio productions, you can buy downloadable copies for only $3. The site has interactive feedback that takes suggestions from and makes suggestions to its users, and the interface is clean and wonderfully usable. The customers aren't the only beneficiaries; B-Side shares half its profits with the film companies that produce the independent films it carries.