Music isn't dead. Music is alive and well. More people are making more music than ever before, and it's getting heard.
The only thing that changes is how a business model or industry function as things change in the way people buy, sell, steal, make and listen to music. And that question is just too darn big to discuss here.
A short answer: maybe the OLD way of conducting the music industry, with its expectations of certain profit margins, ROIs and cashflow, is "dying" (I'd have to argue even that, but you have to start somewhere). Even if it is, one model's "death" is a new model's "opportunity."
Don't forget this has happened before: how the publishing industry (scores printed on paper) trembled when phonorecord delivery appeared! The publishers are hardly out of business, despite more than a century after Edison. Just a thought.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com