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So surely it's time to stop obsessing over CD sales and start providing an online service people actually want? The latter is particularly important. Though there are plenty of options out there, for many – myself included – their closed natures, with differing forms of music formats and DRM, make them unpalatable.

Thanks to the industry's intransigence and fear we're stuck in a situation where different stores are selling essentially different products. Whereas with CDs, or past physical formats, you could walk into different shops and buy identical products, the current digital distribution models lock you into the operating systems, media players and portable players that support it. It seems like a ridiculous state of affairs, and the music industry has only itself to blame for allowing Apple and Microsoft to take control of the market.

But what do we, the customers, actually want from an online music service? No DRM would be nice – who wants their rights 'managed' anyway? – but in truth this is probably wishful thinking, and at best an open DRM platform that could be applied to different file formats and was free to license would be a bearable compromise. Vitally, if given the proper support from the industry then Apple and Microsoft would have to get onboard. It must be added that this idea is by no means new; Sun Microsystems launched its own interoperable open DRM, Open Media Commons, back in 2005. Clearly it hasn't made much headway.

So either no DRM or open DRM, that’s a good start; what next? Well, if we're embracing the idea of openness, why not a selection of different formats? AAC, MP3, WMA, FLAC and more; if I'm buying the music I want to be able to choose what formats it comes in. Moreover, I want to be able to choose what bit-rate my tracks are encoded at. Standard levels of 128KB/s or 192KB/s VBR may be fine for some, but many want the option of higher quality encoding, either with higher bit-rates or lossless formats.

And let's get something clear: I want to own the music. Whether one pays by the track, album or subscribes, the music I download should be mine by right. None of this expiring the moment I end my subscription, or spontaneously combusting the moment I try and switch computers or copy my music to back it up. I should be able to re-download tracks, perhaps even change the encoding from the one I originally downloaded. Indeed, if this were done how it should be, I'd happily pay a small amount extra for this service provided it wasn't more than I'd originally paid for that music.

Ultimately, what is needed is flexibility; the flexibility to do with one's music what you please, within the confines of the law. It's not much to ask, but it remains to be seen whether the industry and the market can reach the position customers want. Moves from Apple and EMI to make its music collection on iTunes DRM free was a step in the right direction, but that's an isolated incident in a market still dominated by DRM protected music. Can the industry ever embrace openness and choice? Sooner it or later it will have to, or the industry could change forever.

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