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For music fans, all-you-can-stream music services like Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio are kind of dream come true. Signing up gives you instant access to a library of millions of songs from major label and indie acts from around the world. Most services are now free, with some limitations on usage. For paying users, as long as you keep your subscription, there's really no need to pay for most individual tracks or albums (unless you're an audiophile). In the case of Spotify, you can even merge your local music collection with the service's cloud-based selection of music. Awesome.

For artists, it's another story. The dirty little secret of services like Spotify and others is that they are not particularly lucrative for artists. At all. Each of them has managed to court record labels with attractive enough licensing deals, but that doesn't necessarily trickle down to the artists themselves. As a result, many artists have held back new releases from streaming services, or jumped ship all together.

I'll never forget when I first discovered Napster. I was in high school and had heard about it from a friend. As an avid music fan, I was delighted to suddenly find myself with access to a seemingly limitless trove of songs, some of which were previously available only on $40 CD-R bootlegs in the back of record shops where they also sold paraphernalia strictly designed for smoking tobacco and only tobacco.

I never abandoned purchasing music all together, but the MP3 struck me as a far more convenient format than the compact disc, and Napster gave me quick and easy access to a world of MP3's. When Radiohead's "Kid A" showed up on Napster weeks before the CD was available in stores, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it?

Music has been a huge part of the Web since the days when Geocities-hosted fan sites offered Nirvana MIDI files and 15-second clips of songs in WAV format. A decade ago, we saw the rise and fall of Napster, the remnants of which were recently sold yet again. From the ashes of Napster rose a new era of digital music, fueled in large part by the iPod and iTunes Music Store. The traditional structures of the music industry may never return to what they once were, and that's okay. Today we have access to more music than ever before and the tools for creating it are available to anyone who can afford a laptop.

Music is still a huge - and growing - part of the Web today. This year, we watched a number of trends unfold in the digital music space. Picking the five most significant was no easy task, but we manage to narrow it down. This space is still evolving, and we can only imagine how it will look another decade from now.

For several weeks prior to last week's f8 conference, word got around that Facebook would be unveiling some kind of music initiative. Would the social networking behemoth launch its own streaming service? A cloud music locker like Google, Apple and Amazon? As details emerged it became clear that their ambitions were more modest, but still very significant: Facebook would be partnering with a handful of existing music services to more closely integrate them with the social mega-site.

That's exactly what went live last week shortly after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and others took the stage at f8. Services like Spotify, Rdio and Mog are now more tightly integrated into Facebook's platform, with real-time music listening data showing up everywhere from your News Feed to the site's new Music dashboard.

Music streaming service MOG has announced that it is adding a free, advertising-supported subscription plan. The move, which is almost certainly a response to the recent U.S. launch of Spotify, is designed to attract more people to the service's 11 million song library of all-you-can-stream music.

Previously, MOG was only available in one of two paid "premium" flavors. European sensation Spotify launched in the U.S. with two premium tiers as well, but crucially included a free subscription service with ads and some modest limitations on streaming. Spotify picked up 1.4 million American users in its first few weeks.

Slacker Radio is looking for ways to add revenue to their mobile streams and is teaming with mobile video advertising company YuMe to optimize monetization of its mobile division. Slacker has between 25 and 30 million subscribers, most of whom come to the service from pre-loaded devices on most of the major U.S. carriers. As such, adding a stout mobile advertising model could mark Slacker as the next major force in the competitive music streaming market.

Slacker is in growth mode. With those 30 million members come almost 400,000 paid premium subscriptions. The company is able to convert about 10% of new mobile free subscribers to paid members, a robust number. Yet, it is important for Slacker to optimize its streaming product as 75% to 85% of listening on the service comes from the free streaming product and not the paid on-demand option. That is where YuMe comes in. With Spotify on the rise and Pandora the dominant service in the sector, Slacker has to make as many moves as it can to gain an edge.

In the battle of cloud music services, you have a variety of options including radio service like Pandora and Last.fm, online lockers like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, Internet radio stations and premium, "program-your-own" services like MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody and Zune. But what if you want it all? Then you may want to consider mSpot and its recently updated mobile app for Android.

Streaming music services like Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Grooveshark, Slacker Radio and others are making headlines for their innovations in today's digital music economy and its extension onto our mobile devices, into our homes and even into our cars. But when it comes to who's paying for the premium (i.e., "paid") level of these services, a new study shows that it's often indie music fans who are footing the bill.

Slacker Radio, an Internet radio service similar to streaming music giant Pandora, has just introduced a new tier to its subscription service: a $9.99 per month Premium version which offers music on-demand. Previously, as the name implies, Slacker Radio was more focused on a radio-like experience, where you listen to a station built around your favorite artist, just like in Pandora. For example, type in "Lady Gaga" and you'll be presented with her hottest tracks, as well as those from "related" artists.

To ditch the advertisements and skip songs you don't like, a $3.99/month subscription (Slacker Radio Plus) was made available. And today, Slacker has launched another option: a $9.99/month Premium Radio subscription for playing the songs, albums or artists you want to hear on demand. This is similar to a number of other services out there today, including two of our favorites, MOG and Rdio.

Which one is right for you?

European upstart music service Spotify just announced that it is putting new limits on its millions of free account holders. "[I]t's vital that we continue offering an on-demand free service to you and millions more like you," the company said in its announcement, "but to make that possible we have to put some limits in place going forward."

CNet's Greg Sandoval reported yesterday that some new limits were coming, based on unnamed but clearly well-informed sources. Free account holders today are able to listen to up to 20 hours of music on-demand, song by song and album by album, each month. The new limits will allow 20 hours for the first 6 months of any user's new account. After 6 months, free listening will be cut down to 10 hours. That means 20 minutes on average, every day of the month, for free. That's still generous, as far as I'm concerned.