It's been an eventful week for online music, with the launch of Apple's iTunes Match and the public unveiling of Google Music (along with a new MP3 store in the Android Market). This follows on from continued innovation in the music streaming market, in particular the integration of Spotify and similar services into Facebook. It's great to see so much action in the online music space. But... there are some major problems with these services. Here are the top three issues, in my opinion.

The three biggest product updates in online music over the past month all have one thing in common: most of the world cannot use these products. Facebook's integration of Spotify and other streaming services; Apple's iTunes Match; Google Music (at least when it comes to the new MP3 store, which is a big part of the appeal for Google Music).

With iTunes Match, Google's new MP3 store and Amazon's MP3 store, you have to be a resident of the U.S. in order to use them. As for the streaming services, they too have limited reach. Spotify for example is only available in certain European countries and in the USA. This means that Facebook's integration of streaming music services isn't available to a large proportion of its 800 million user base. To put some numbers around that, more than 75% of Facebook users live outside of the USA. That's 600 million people, most of whom probably cannot access the streaming music features.

This frustrating state of affairs is of course due to the music industry. Record labels are trying desperately to hold onto the reins of power with licensing terms that are outdated and differ across countries. The whole point of the World Wide Web is to give people across the entire world equal opportunities to create and consume content. Yet a large percentage of the Web is denied the chance to use these wonderful new online music services.

OK, this is a first world problem and certainly not something to do a Live Aid about. All I'm saying is that I don't live in the U.S. and I'm extremely frustrated that I cannot use most of the best online music services.

2. Inconsistent User Experience

If you're fortunate enough to be able to use these services in the first place, you'll have noticed many flaws in the user experience.

Facebook's integration of Spotify and other streaming music services, labeled frictionless sharing, posts every single song you listen to onto your Facebook news feed. While it requires the user to turn this functionality on, the problem is in the lack of granular control. Once you turn it on, there's no way you can tell Facebook: just publish the songs that make me look cool to my friends. Or: don't post that I'm listening to Justin Bieber. It posts everything, like it or not.

Google Music has some user experience oddities too, which Danny Sullivan outlined in full. He also pointed out similar issues with iTunes and Spotify. In my own limited testing of Google Music (through a VPN) I found it odd that I could not share music to Google+ that I had uploaded myself. Yet I could share a song I'd gotten through the Android Market.

Then consider the differences in sharing functionality in Facebook and Google+. In Facebook the music sharing is automatic and all-encompassing. In Google+, it's restricted and a manual process. Two opposite ends of the sharing spectrum - and plenty of differences in-between, among Facebook, Google+ and many other sharing services.

In some ways this is just what you get with intense competition, but on the other hand I hope best practices evolve over time for music sharing. So that I can share any song I want to, in roughly the same manner, across any social network.

3. Your Music Is All Over The Place

Related to the user experience problem is the fact that one's music is becoming difficult to manage, because there are so many different ways to listen to and/or buy music (again, assuming you even have access to the services).

Say I download a song from the Android Store; it now lives in my Google Music app. Sure I can sync it to iTunes or wherever I like. But it requires manual set-up or action. You'll quickly lose track of where all of your music is.

Or say that I discover a brilliant new album on Spotify. I listen to it a few times, then I move on to other music. But I never bought that album, so I don't own it. That's all well and good, but if I use iTunes as my primary music store then I don't have that album there. Sure I can just buy it, but I've already listened to it a few times and I may not listen to it again for months or even years. Besides, if I've stumped up for a monthly subscription to Spotify then I may not feel inclined to shell out more money for that particular album. My point is: some of your music now lives in a local app like iTunes, some is on a service like Spotify, some you may have discovered on Google+, and so on. It's all over the place and you're relying on a bunch of apps and services now.

While sync services like iTunes Match help with some of this (particularly listening to your music across devices), it's going to be a challenge to figure out where your music should 'live' and what music you still want to 'own'. This isn't as big of a problem as the above two issues, but it's still something that Apple, Google and co should help their users manage.

Those are my current three gripes with the online music services. The biggest for me is the geographic restrictions. What's your main beef - if any - with this new wave of online music services?

There are two main battles going on in the online music market, each of which is benefiting consumers greatly. One is between the three so-called cloud lockers mentioned above, which are competing to be the online archive for your digital music collection. The second battle is about whether you even need an online archive at all.

Assuming you want to use a cloud service to archive or backup your music collection (and at this point in the evolution of digital music, you probably do), let's check out the three main services.

I'm a big music fan and probably fairly typical in terms of my requirements for online archiving, so I'll use myself as a use case.

Why Do I Need an Online Archive For My Music?

Like tens of millions of people, I use iTunes to manage my digital music collection. I typically sync the songs in my iTunes to my iPod, which I take on walks or plug into the stereo in my lounge.

I currently have about 12,500 songs stored on iTunes; and I haven't even transferred a good portion of my CD collection to iTunes. I have a 148 GB 2008 model iPod, which has about 32 GB free currently. About 78.5 GB is taken up by music (note: the total file size for you will depend on the quality of digital file you choose, the length of the songs, and so on).

So my current iPod, over 3 years old, is still adequate for my digital music storage needs.

However neither my iPhone (13.7 GB) or iPad (58.1 GB) has enough storage to fit all of my iTunes music. So that's a good use case right there for me to use a cloud service for my music: it would enable me to listen to my music on iPhone or iPad, even if I hadn't synced it to those devices.

Having an online archive would also motivate me to transfer the rest of my CD collection into iTunes, a manual task that I've been avoiding for years. After I do that, I'd be able to listen to anything in my music collection, whatever device I'm on. That seems like a good deal to me.

The 3 Main Cloud Lockers

Just today, Apple launched iTunes Match (currently only available to U.S. users). Apple's online storage service iCloud is the backend. iTunes Match offers iTunes users the ability to sync their entire music library across devices. It does this by "matching" each song with a high quality version stored on Apple's servers, which saves you having to upload those songs. However any songs which Apple doesn't have can be uploaded. Currently Apple has imposed a limit of 25,000 songs (not including songs purchased from the iTunes Store). If you have more than that, you are currently prevented from using the service at all!

But wait, you can almost guarantee these days that anything Apple releases will be matched by a lower cost Amazon offering. Sure enough, Amazon has a "limited time offer" of unlimited music storage on its Cloud Drive for $20 per year. That offer also comes with 20 GB of non-music storage. There is some fine print as to what music is eligible, but it looks like most of my music collection would qualify.

Finally, there is Google Music. It's currently in beta and only available to U.S. users. Google Music offers storage of up to 20,000 songs for free, during the beta period. Pricing hasn't been announced yet for premium offerings, but it will no doubt be very competitive with Apple and Amazon. Google is also currently in negotiations with music labels to launch an MP3 store as part of Google Music.

Which Service Should You Use?

Each of Apple, Amazon and Google is offering a pretty amazing deal for storing your digital music. From zero to $25 per year, the pricing is almost irrelevant considering how much storage you get. If you have a decent music collection, you're talking about archiving 50 GB worth of music at the least.

There are tradeoffs with each of the three services. With Amazon or Google, you need to upload all of your music - which will likely be a big bandwidth and time hog. Apple's iTunes Match gets around that pain point by "matching" songs you have with songs on its servers. That's a very compelling advantage to iTunes Match.

Some people, however, may balk at submitting to Apple's control for yet another part of their digital life. So Amazon or Google may be a better bet for them.

For my purposes, with 12,500 songs currently in my iTunes and a good portion of them likely to be on Apple's servers, iTunes Match is a great cloud solution for me. At least it will be when it becomes available outside of the USA.

Let us know which one of these three you'll use - and why. Or perhaps you want to steer clear of the big companies and go with an indie solution. We're all ears in the comments...

Lead photo adapted from Flickr user notsogoodphotography and cat photo by Elmo Keep.

The result is an app that lets users discover more obscure, independent and often homemade music, rather than a catalogue of music that's only been formally released by record labels. That's because SoundCloud hosts mostly user-generated music, including covers, mashups and original compositions. Some more established artists and labels have even embraced Soundcloud and uploaded commercially released albums to the service. It's essentially the YouTube of audio.

Surpisingly, tapping a song that you find via an artist search does not initiate a recomendation-based station like Pandora or Last.fm. Instead, it adds it to your personalized station. The recommendations come into play earlier in the search process. A search for "The Flaming Lips" returns music by that band, as well as several acts that are deemed similar by Last.fm's data.

Since the content on SoundCloud is so varied - some artists have full albums, some have 30-second clips, while others have only remixes, mashups and covers - the experience of using the app can be a bit varied as well. On the whole, it's a pretty effective way to discover new music beyond the large but inherintly limited catalogs of streaming services like Spotify, Mog and Rdio.

A Different Kind of Mash-Up: APIs Fuel Music 2.0

If nothing else, this is a creative fusion of two APIs from different music services that results in a new music-listening experience. It's the same kind of data mash-up we've seen on a variety of projects that utilize the massive Echo Nest music recommendation data set. For example, one developer created a recommendation engine for Spotify, which is a feature sorely lacking from the popular music streaming service.

Developers have been using the Last.fm API for years to build all kinds of new mashups and apps for discovering and listening to music.

The social audio-sharing site experienced several hours of intermittent downtime yesterday as SoundCloud's engineers fought off the attack.

Just the day before, the site experienced similar downtime issues, although it isn't clear if that was related to the DDoS attack or not. In terms of a motive for the attack, it was likely just the thrill of bringing down an increasingly popular service, rather than the fulfillment of some ideological agenda as we've seen in the past with Anonymous and Wikileaks-related DDoS attacks.

As of today, the site appears to be loading and operating without issues.

SoundCloud was founded in Berlin in 2008 as a social networking site primarily for musicians to share and promote their music. It has since grown into an audio-sharing platform for amateur and professional musicians alike, as well as podcasts and other audio snippets. In short, it does for audio what YouTube does for video, albeit on a smaller scale.

Noisey, currently in public beta, features mini documentaries of bands alongside videos of live music. I tested Noisey out by viewing the coverage of a young band I discovered via this year's SXSW Music festival.

I first discovered the band Yuck via NPR Music's coverage of SXSW. Yuck is based in London, but is itself a global showcase - members come from London, New Jersey and Hiroshima. They're a 4-piece who play a melodic and youthful blend of alt rock.

Noisey offers up a 5-part series on Yuck, starting with an introductory mini-documentary. The other 4 parts are mostly live songs, interspersed with commentary from the band and fans.

The interface has links to Yuck's social media presence - the band is active on both Twitter and Facebook. Yuck also has a blog, which features songs via SoundCloud, videos via YouTube, tour date details, and more.

There's a lot to like about Noisey. Discovering new music via an Internet version of a music TV network is compelling enough. It's also truly global, by allowing users to peek inside the music scenes of countries all over the world. Yuck is from England. I also checked out Criolo, an underground hip-hop artist from Sao Paulo in Brazil. "This is rap for real," says a fan on the streets of Sao Paulo in the introductory video, "favela, slums, public housing." Word.

Noisey is curated by the pop culture magazine VICE. It also boasts technical support from Dell and Intel.

If you want to know what a future MTV will look like, it will likely bear a lot of similarity to Noisey. Check it out!

The first service we'll look at is a startup from Berlin, Germany, called SoundCloud. It's a platform to publish music and audio to the Web - and it's been experiencing rapid growth.

SoundCloud is being used by professional musicians and amateurs alike. It's also become a platform for other online music services, such as The Hype Machine and We Are Hunted.

Trending alternative pop singer Lykke Li has been using SoundCloud to publish songs from her upcoming new album, Wounded Rhymes. There are also remixes of Li's songs on her SoundCloud. Indeed, one of SoundCloud's best features is that it allows artists to collaborate with others - including their fans - on remixes. 50 Cent and R.E.M. have both launched remix contests recently using SoundCloud.

SoundCloud recently went over 3 million registered users. Given its growth and the fact that popular musicians are using it, is SoundCloud a threat to MySpace? I checked out Lykke Li's MySpace page and the most recent entry is a link to a new song she just posted to SoundCloud (not available on MySpace). That song has 58 comments, as at time of writing. So yes, SoundCloud is a threat to MySpace. SoundCloud is hosting popular new music, tthere is social commentary happening around that music, and the site is becoming increasingly popular.

What then of Fred Wilson's hope that other audio creativity will blossom on SoundCloud? Wilson recorded a podcast on SoundCloud recently to explain. He noted that "the web is still too quiet, there's not enough audio expression happening" - meaning podcasting, spoken word, even poetry.

In that podcast, Wilson defined SoundCloud as an "online platform for audio expression and sharing on the Web and mobile devices."

"What YouTube is for video," he said, "SoundCloud is for audio." (at the end of 2008, Wilson called SoundCloud "Flickr for Musicians," which indicates how the product has evolved since then: from a musician-focused service to a consumer-focused one that nevertheless still relies on musicians).

Wilson elaborated further in a comment in his blog: "I believe that mobile phones as recording devices and tablets as creation devices and "audio exhaust" from gaming are all game changers for audio creation and sharing."

I'm skeptical that podcasting or spoken word audio will ever become a widespread activity on the Web. The problem is that listening to podcasts and spoken word audio requires focus - it just doesn't fit into the fast-moving, multi-tasking media world we're all living in. Audio will most likely never be shared and curated on a mass scale, like video is on YouTube.

However, my guess is that SoundCloud won't even need the audio aspect. It's already got popular music acts like 50 Cent, R.E.M., Lykke Li, Foo Fighters and Deadmau5 using its service. And the platform is very impressive: the API being used by Hype Machine and others, widgets galore, over 100 apps hooked into it.

Do you use SoundCloud? I'm curious to hear your thoughts too on the audio creation aspect of the product, do you think that will pan out?

Along with the early launch of the digital version tonight, Radiohead posted the music video of its first single off the album, 'Lotus Flower' - on, you guessed it, YouTube. While the new album doesn't have the pay-what-you-like innovation of its 2007 release, In Rainbows, it is notable that Radiohead went 100% online this time. The announcement on Twitter and a special eCommerce website, the digital download, the video on YouTube. Plus, the social media reaction is astounding.

It's all happened so fast, too. Earlier this week, Radiohead announced on Twitter that it would be releasing its 8th album via digital download on Saturday 19th February. A physical, self-described 'Newspaper Album' is to be released in May, featuring vinyl records, a CD and lots of art work.

The announcement, itself unexpected, built anticipation - which was whipped into an online frenzy tonight when the digital version was launched a day early.

If this was a startup product launch, you'd have to call it masterful. Which is exactly what Radiohead's new album release is. It's like they've just launched a highly anticipated new app. How times have changed in the music industry. No longer are music fans camping outside record stores waiting for the double CD release of the new Guns n' Roses album at exactly midnight. Nowadays the artist can do everything online and independent of record labels and stores, announce it on Twitter and launch the first video on YouTube.

As I write this, music publications like All Songs Considered are breathlessly live-blogging the new album ("# 4 songs in #kingoflimbs feels like a skipping heart, thrilling and unsettling." @allsongs).

As for me, I'm kind of regretting ordering the larger WAV version - it's taking so damn long to download! ;)

A big mover over the past 6 months has been Arcade Fire, which Phillips said is "a masterclass in the use of social media." More intriguing though is who the number 1 most talked about artist in social media was over all of 2010. It wasn't Lady Gaga, or Kanye, or Arcade Fire. Who could it be then? Read on to find out!

The reports for the the second half of 2010 are based on We Are Hunted's analysis of 486,631 music articles and 16,063,656 "music related Twitter messages." Note that the music articles are from specialist music publications and blogs, not mainstream press.

Who's Popular in Social Media

The top 4 artists in We Are Hunted's popularity chart for July-December remained the same as in the previous 6-month period. Surprisingly, English band Muse was number 1. That seems a little odd, given that the likes of Lady Gaga and Kanye West seem to generate much more chatter in social media. We analyze why Muse is number 1 below. Radiohead and The xx were numbers 2 and 3, respectively. Lady Gaga was the 4th most popular, slipping from number 2 in the first half of the year.

Why did Lady Gaga drop a couple of notches? We Are Hunted co-founder and CTO Stephen Phillips replied that "the industry is very fragmented."

"At the height of her popularity, Lady GaGa seemed to be everywhere. But in reality, only 7 in 1000 people were listening to her each day."

It's not only current artists that feature in the charts. Classic artists like The Beatles, Nirvana and Pink Floyd are still hugely popular, according to Phillips. "They have remained in the top 20 artists listened to overall since we started measuring it 2 years ago."

Who's Influential in the Music Press

One interesting finding from the research is that the music press - traditional magazines as well as online sites like Pitchfork - have a lot of sway in generating social media buzz. While that's not a surprising finding, We Are Hunted was able to identify specific publications who are influential in social media.

"Pitchfork, Prefix Magazine, NME, Hipster Runoff, Clash Music and Spin can blow up a new artist," Phillips told ReadWriteWeb. "If they give coverage, the blogosphere follows," he added.

Phillips pointed to the trendy alternative band Deerhunter, which "was nowhere in our top 200" in the first half of 2010, but was 3rd in the Emerging chart for the second half of the year. According to Phillips, this was "on the back of a great album launch and strong press." He noted that BBC 6 Music in particular gave great support to Deerhunter.

Who Went Mainstream in Second Half of 2010

The only new entrant to the top 5 for the second half of 2010 was Arcade Fire, which wasn't even in the top 10 six months ago. As Phillips put it, "Arcade Fire went mainstream in a big way in the last half of 2010."

Others who went big over this period, according to Phillips, were Florence and the Machine and Mumford And Sons.

Was Arcade Fire's social media activity really that good? We did our own analysis of Arcade Fire's web presence last August, when the band released their critically acclaimed album The Suburbs. Our conclusion suggests that it was:

...the online promotion of Arcade Fire's new album is comprehensive. Both Facebook and Twitter are well used for promotional purposes, although the band members don't appear to be active on these social media sites. And the band is pushing into new social media services - it has a new YouTube channel and Vimeo too.

We Are Hunted's report shows that Twitter activity for Arcade Fire peaked over July, in anticipation of the album release on August 3. This suggests that the band was very well hyped prior to the album's release.

It's interesting to compare that to another well-hyped album release, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - released on November 22, 2010. West only comes in at #47 on We Are Hunted's popularity chart, suggesting that prior to November was relatively quiet for him on the social media world (musically, at least).

West's Twitter popularity spiked in late November (note that the scales are different between the two charts listed here). The difference is that Kanye peaked on his album release date and continued to have high Twitter popularity leading up to Christmas. Whereas Arcade Fire actually peaked before their album release. One reading of the difference is that Kanye's album generated more interest among the Twitter chattering classes, than Arcade Fire's managed to do post album release.

Why is Muse Number 1?

You may be wondering why Muse is number 1 in social media, not just for one 6-month period but for the entire year! It seems like both Arcade Fire and Kanye West were talked about a lot more in social media over 2010 than Muse. Personally, I'm a big fan of Muse and have been listening to their latest album, The Resistance, regularly since its release in September 2009. But what have they done to be number 1 on We Are Hunted's charts for all of 2010, ahead of such talked about acts like Kanye West and Lady Gaga?

I posed that question to Stephen Phillips. He firstly noted that "there are are a few artists like them (MGMT, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead) who are at the top of our popularity charts while not getting the press of Bruno Mars or Lady GaGa."

He speculated that "maybe the demographics are different, or maybe bands like Radiohead and Muse have more cross over appeal?"

"Because we focus on what people are listening to and talking about, and ignore mainsteam press, maybe we are getting a measure of dedicated music fans than the general populace."

That seems a likely explanation, that bands like Muse and Radiohead have a large number of dedicated fans who talk about them regularly - not just when they release a new album or do something newsworthy.

Let us know your thoughts on why Muse is number 1 in social media.

Since social media is now an integral part of the entertainment business, services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become key to a musician's success. Kanye West released his latest album at the end of last year: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Both leading up to the release (with music leaks and controversial tweets) and after (further mouthy tweets and a 34-minute epic video released on YouTube and his website), West has utilized the social Web masterfully.

West's website is simple, but effective in promoting his videos and Twitter activity.

The top half of the homepage features Kanye's 34-minute mini-movie entitled Runaway. The real-time conversation around Kanye is highlighted directly below, with a short stream of tweets tagged with "runaway." Below that, there is a link to Twitter.com (surprisingly, not Kanye's own Twitter profile page) and "Join the conversation" leads to a Twitter search results page for "#runaway OR #runawaymovie".

The words "GOOD FRIDAYS" leads to a collection of free music downloads, although you need to enter your email address to get the music.

At the bottom of the page is a screenshot of the album, with links to buy it on iTunes.

Meanwhile over on Facebook, the best part of Kanye West's page is an app called BandPage. BandPage provides a playlist of Kanye songs and videos, similar to what MySpace has done for years but which Facebook never emulated. When we reviewed the Facebook page of Arcade Fire last August, actual music was conspicuous by its absence. So I'm pleased that Kanye's web designers found a way around that. As for how much of the man himself we see on Facebook, there's no sign of West posting there - the Wall is made up entirely of his tweets.

Speaking of MySpace, Kanye offers a well-designed presence there too. On YouTube, he has a page via Vevo - the joint venture company that includes Universal Music Group, the umbrella organization that releases West's music.

Overall, Kanye West has a well designed web presence and his own voice is clearly heard through Twitter. West is a highly opinionated and entertaining artist, so Twitter is an ideal tool for him to communicate to his fans. It's logical then that both his website and Facebook page rely heavily on Twitter content.

Finally, it's worth noting that Kanye West has taken full advantage of Internet song leaks. Songs from MBDTF were leaked to the Web throughout 2010, which created hype and much interest in the album when it was released last November. Kanye reportedly leaked some songs himself, although they were different mixes from those on the final album.

Whatever you think of Kanye's music (personally, I'm a fan), he's utilized social media smartly and to loud effect. Let us know in the comments what you think of Kanye's web presence.

For the purposes of this post, we're going to focus on the 3 new kids on the block - MOG, Rdio and Spotify - and look at what makes them so compelling. Firstly, you may be wondering what exactly is the difference between MOG and last.fm, or Rdio and Pandora?

1. "iTunes in the Cloud" - in a nutshell, you can listen to entire albums and choose specific songs on MOG, Rdio and Spotify. It's very similar to how people use iTunes, but these new services are online apps. In addition, the new breed of apps have features such as downloading songs and curating social playlists.

By comparison, last.fm and Pandora are "online radio" services - a stream of songs that you have little control over, other than to play songs similar to a certain artist or tag.

2. Subscription model. We discussed the importance of subscriptions in yesterday's analysis of tablet magazines and newspapers. Apple is proving to be a troublesome middleman in that market, but in the online music business apps have been able to route around iTunes. MOG, Rdio and Spotify all rely on $5-10 per month subscriptions to make money - although Spotify offers a free, ad-supported version too.

For consumers, the advantage of subscriptions is being able to access whatever music you like online - as long as it's in the catalog of those apps. MOG has an estimated 10 million tracks, compared to Rdio's 7 million. Mobile devices are a big part of this trend, but it's not limited to that. Recently MOG and Rdio announced plans to connect you to your music in the car and home.

There are of course some differences between the 3 new kid apps. For example, MOG has a large music content network called The MOG Music Network (MMN), Rdio offers a slick sync with your iTunes catalog and Spotify has premium offline functionality.

Despite the fascination for these new online music apps, there is one big gotcha: many people have limited or no access to them, due to outdated copyright laws. Most international users cannot use MOG or Rdio (or at least have limited access), while U.S. and non-European countries cannot use Spotify.

Personally I have zero access to Pandora and Spotify and have limited MOG access (I can't download the MOG iPhone app, but I can listen to MOG on my desktop). My staple over the years has been last.fm - which I like anyway, but it helps that it's the only online music service I've been able to consistently access.

I like the serendipity of last.fm, although I've started to use MOG now to listen to entire albums or specific playlists online. Note that you can scrobble your music data to last.fm using MOG or Rdio ("scrobble" is last.fm terminology and means to track what you listen to via an online database).

Let us know in the comments which online music app(s) you use the most! You can also check out the responses to this question on our Facebook page or via Twitter.

Predictions are of course a tricky business. The braver the predictions, the more risk of them not coming true! Without further ado, here are my predictions for 2011 - 5 serious and 1 not so serious.

2: eBooks will hit 20% market penetration by the end of 2011. In 2010, the Association of American Publishers reported that eBooks made up 9.03% of total consumer book sales - compared to 3.31% at the close of 2009. I'm predicting this growth to rocket in 2011, thanks to a plentiful supply of cheap eReaders and a long overdue price war on eBooks between Amazon, Barnes&Noble and others. I predict it will reach 20%, in other words one in five books in 2011 will be sold as an eBook. If that bold prediction comes true, it will be great news for book consumers and will silence eBook skeptics about the future of eBooks. Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting paper books will go away, just that eBooks become much more popular and utilized.

3: Internet of Cars will be the surprise hit of the year. This year we saw further commercialization of services that connect everyday objects to the Internet. In 2011, I predict that cars (not smart homes, smart grids, etc.) will be where the most innovation and mainstream attention happens for Internet of Things technologies. Apps like AutoBot will gain traction over 2011.

4: Internet TV tips and gets huge consumer uptake. In 2010 there was a lot of progress in this sector: Apple TV re-design, Google TV, Boxee, Roku, Clicker and other developments. Most of this activity was largely experimental though, in that no one vendor got the formula quite right. For example, the launch problems of Google TV at the end of this year. However in 2011, consumers will flock to these products as they mature and more Internet TV content is made available - particularly in the U.S. market, but hopefully to international markets too.

Picking a breakout product is difficult, as each of the main players offers something different. I don't think there will be a breakout product, although Google has the broadest capabilities and so it has the potential to become one if it gets the product right. I predict that Google won't dominate this market though; and neither will Apple.

5: A major pop music star will do something amazing with web technologies, that blows open the online music scene. Arcade Fire set the scene in 2010, with their experimental collaboration with Google on an HTML5-fueled interactive video. In 2011, I expect an even bigger star - someone innovative like Kanye West or Lady Gaga, or a totally new star - to do something that re-defines what music means online. That could be something new in a live show, a music video, or something completely unexpected. To get more specific, I'll bet on something that blends a live album with internet technologies - which sells unexpectedly well and thus sets a trend in the music industry.

6: Bonus prediction: by the end of 2011, the most viewed YouTube video of all time will no longer be Justin Bieber. Instead it will be a collaboration between an unknown comedian and a breakout new baby. I'm envisaging a combination of comedy tap dancing and baby giggling (perhaps recorded using an auto-tune device). Yes, 2011 will mark the return of viral comedy and laughing babies to the top of the YouTube charts - this time as a duet!

AP points to an experimental Web video by Arcade Fire, created using advanced browser technology HTML5, as evidence that the music industry is adapting to videos on the Web. In related news, according to online analytics firm comScore, MTV is now the number 1 music destination on the Web. So it too is evolving fast.

The video features real-time graphics rendering and real-world imagery from Google Maps satellite and Street View. It includes multiple windows, 3D birds and an invitation to write a note to your younger self at the end of the video.

MTV #1 With a Bullet, Online

Meanwhile, MTV is showing that it can translate its music television dominance to the Web. FastCompany reports the latest figures from comScore, showing that MTV has moved above Vevo and MySpace Music to take the number 1 spot in the online music category.

MTV's traffic has increased 165% year-over-year, according to comScore. More than 53 million unique visitors went to MTV properties in August.

Vevo isn't far behind, with over 49 million unique visitors. Vevo is a Hulu-like alliance between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Company - with the videos hosted by YouTube. It's worth noting that, unlike MTV, Vevo is 100% devoted to music. Just as it does on television, MTV's online sites include reality shows and other non-music content.

However, MTV also includes more than just music videos in its music-related content. And that may be a key part of its online success. Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks' music group, told Fast Company that "MTV is much more than just music videos: It's performances, live streams, B-rolls, interviews, behind-the-scenes stuff."

Your Current Favorite Online Music Video?

So the lessons in adapting music videos to the Web include offering different and interactive experiences (a la Arcade Fire), plus extras on the Web (a la MTV).

Let us know in the comments whether you're an MTV, Vero or MySpace watcher online - and which you prefer. Also, what online music videos have you seen lately that have impressed you?

Either Billboard is keeping up with the times more than Ultimate Chart likes to admit, or Ultimate Chart isn't actually changing much in the music industry after all. Which is it?

On Huffington Post, music industry businessman Jeff Pollack claimed that Ultimate Chart is a "game changer." There is "an increasing disparity between what the industry charts define as a hit and what is really popular," he wrote. He pointed to the fact that U2's song "Beautiful Day" peaked at #21 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, which meant that it wasn't considered a "hit." However, it's probably likely that it wouldn't have hit the top 10 on Ultimate Chart either - since it is, like Billboard, dominated by hip-hop or pop singers.

Pollack notes one example of a song that made it big on Ultimate Chart, but not on Billboard: Shakira's "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)," which went to #2 on Ultimate Chart but peaked at #38 on Billboard's "conventional" chart. However, that sounds like an anomaly to me - since the song's online popularity was due to it being a theme song for the recent football World Cup, which was a huge online success.

Ultimate Chart, created by a company called BigChampagne, is certainly a step in the right direction. Analyzing the online activity around a song is a crucial element in measuring its success nowadays, probably more important than sales and radio play.

However, Ultimate Chart seems to fall short of the breathless hype laid on by the likes of Huffington Post, HypeBot and music industry insiders. HypeBot (which is one of my favorite blogs, I should note) had the exclusive on Ultimate Chart's launch. It wrote that "for the first time, the Ultimate Chart will take a record industry known to be constrained to short-term thinking and a "hits mentality" towards a more long-term, sustainable mindset."

If that's the case, then why do we see the same old "hits" on the Ultimate Chart top 10 as we see on Billboard?

What do you think, is Ultimate Chart ultimately over-hyped? Or is it simply reflecting what mainstream audiences are fed and no amount of online analysis will change that?

Instead, we got somewhat evasive and allusive answers on when to expect a U.S. version and were left looking to yesterday's announcement of MOG's move to mobile, with full knowledge that Napster is nipping at its heels.

Ek said that he thinks that the day that we allow music to be seamlessly transported between platforms and carried around on mobile devices would be when we saved the music industry.

"Music that I really love, I tend to want to buy and own still," said Ek. "I don't necessarily want to own it in the format it used to be, like in a dumb plastic disk, but I'm more than happy to pay $100 to get a box set with a t-shirt and notes."

He explained that, while many seem to criticize Spotify for giving music away for free and adding to the problem, "it's not free" and that "with all those listings on the Spotify platform, the artists get paid every time" their music is played.

Ek argued that he thought that the music industry would be "radically bigger" today if users could legally have music on any device, using the metaphor of music as flowing water.

We did, however, get to see a quick demonstration of Spotify for Android, but it was a bit quick to glean much in the way of usability. It did, indeed, play music.

In the end, though, we have to wonder why we're all holding our breath for Spotify to land on U.S. shores. By the show of hands, it certainly doesn't seem that hard to acquire and we have some valid alternatives, like MOG and the soon-to-be Napster platform, as well as their web counterparts.

If you're that worried about getting Spotify, our suggestion would be to go get a proxy service set up and get to it already.

According to analyst firm Forrester's latest report, 2009 was "a lousy end to an even lousier decade" for the music industry and we shouldn't expect much different until at least 2013. Last year, as a matter of fact, was one of the worst years yet, with a 13% decline from the year before.

Of course the economy can't be helping these numbers, but Forrester sees this as a trend that is going to continue until it gradually starts to even out in 2013. By 2014, the company predicts music industry revenue to level off at around $5.5 billion with digital sales taking up most, but not all, of the slack.

The report also has one interesting event to note for 2012 and, no, it isn't the destruction of the world at the hands of a Mayan death clock - digital music sales will finally surpass sales of physical media like CDs and vinyl.

While it goes on to say that 2010 will be a better year than 2009 for the growth rate of spending on digital music, the overall numbers will likely trend downwards after that, as shown in the graph above.