South Korea's Way to the Future

South Korea leads the world in access to broadband services; as of early 2006, 83 percent of households had broadband, compared to roughly 45 percent in the US. Not coincidentally, the country also leads in the transition to digital music sales via digital rights management (DRM) software. In fact; the past decade has seen South Korea's music scene change dramatically. It once had 8,000 music stores; now, it has 400 - partly because of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, but mostly due to the change in music distribution patterns. South Korea is also the first country in which online music sales exceeded CD sales in value. According to The Korea Times, South Koreans spent 400 billion won buying music from traditional stores in 1999; by 2005, that number was down to 108 billion won whereas online music purchases had reached 262 billion won. The exchange rate is roughly 1,000 won to every US dollar, so converting the word "billion" to "million" gives US readers an idea of what's going on in a country one-sixth the US s size and with 1 /15th of its gross domestic product. A typical South Korean mobile phone is a camera as well as a music player, and some include video players, stored value cards, and full keyboards. South Korea's ringtone market alone is larger than its CD market - ringtones brought in US$336 million in 2004, for example. Consumers can buy unlimited music downloads for $5 per month or broadband service for $20 per month - and they're about to have a new form of interoperability among music vendors