In the January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Michael Hirschorn spoke with optimism on digital music's future, and I wholeheartedly agree. A few failures in 2007 are not as important as the fact that people are trying.

"If past is prologue, SpiralFrog and Kazaa, too, will come up short. But all these failures are in the service of a dynamic evolution. Someone—and that someone is likely already at work on the key advance—will figure this out. One next step could be a move by the labels to make more pay-per-download music available without restriction, meaning that once you’ve purchased a song, you can do anything you want with it, currently a no-go on Zune or iTunes. Unrestricted MP3 sites could play VHS to iTunes’s Betamax. However it occurs, though, the execution of a widely used free and free-flowing music download and sharing system is surely imminent."

Hard to disagree with that prediction, but Hirschorn didn't give an over/under. The "if" is not in question nearly as much as the "when."