So where do you see the music industry in 10 years?

[Tone Obsessed]

It's already happening...

With change comes opportunity. The labels missed the train a decade ago. Even the RIAA told them to get into DRM, etc.

When a kid like Shawn Fanning (Napster) can do what he did to the majors from a dorm room in Boston, they should have taken it as a sign and OWNED the model. They had the catalog, etc.

10 years from now? It'll be like it was in the 50's. Indie labels, people committed to a sound or passion for a genre and much like it was then ( and is starting to be now) the playing field will become more level. If I controlled an entertainment conglomerate today, I'd lose the music division or invest in the new model AND FORCE THE NEW MODEL ON EVERYONE. Seen the revenue from Video game sales?

To me, it's lead or get out of the way. Follow is gone from that statement forever ( as a business model, NOT music- we're a culture of "what's hot today" copycats).

I welcome it. It's been junk for so long now, that it's most likely the best opportunity in the past 10 years or so!

Guess we'll see, huh?

TJ

[Peter Morrison]

Let's hope so Tone,

The music model may return to a 50's-esque structure but the sense of a recording studio environment will not be going back that way.

In our day and age of M-boxen and Recording Engineer factories there needs to be a turn back towards quality over quantity... sure anyone can make a record these day and release it on Myspace but I am hoping people start appreciating the work that goes into a real record again and start to notice what sounds good.

But what can I say, I'm 2 months away from a degree in "Sound Recording Technology" and I am just starting my painful climb up recording engineer ladder.


Best
Peter

[8th_note]

I polished up my crystal ball so here goes.....

10 years from now you will be carrying much more of your life's data with you. That includes your music. Owning your music will be on the way out and renting your music will be much more prevalent than it is now. You will have a monthly subscription like XM radio but you will be able to choose the content at any time. If you feel like listening to Tool you'll dial that up. Next song or album you listen to could be Fleetwood Mac. You'll have access to virtually every piece of music ever recorded and for a flat monthly fee you can listen to as much of it as you can stand. Your portable player will stay with you and you'll plug it into your headphones, your car stereo, your tv, and your home stereo. Hell, maybe you'll plug it into your brain.

The artists and record companies will get paid by the play. It will be easy to keep track of.

Major record companies won't go away. There will always be a place for companies that will invest the capital to promote mass market acts. There will still be concerts and there will be the equivalent of Britney and Justin. There will still be 13 year old girls who can be marketed to.

Indie record companies will still be here. They are the venture capitalists of the record industry and they will still be in the business of developing lesser known talent.

Radio will be there for those people who are not dedicated enough to music to master the new technology. Even those of us who are music enthusiasts will tune into radio now and then to hear something new or unexpected.

Indie artists won't be any better off than they are now. We are presently in a music overload situation where there is simply too much new music for each of us to keep track of. It's only going to get worse. Less well known artists will still be slugging it out to capture a little bit of our attention. The music subscription service will offer new artists for us to listen to based on our current listening patterns. That will be one of the ways we find new music.

The music press will still be here. We'll get reviews from Rolling Stone and a variety of smaller publications. Our main source of music info will be the internet and it will be more targeted based on our musical tastes.

There will still be CDs for people like me who like to hold a physical medium and read liner notes printed on paper but they will represent a much smaller piece of the music sales pie.

I think the least change will be in the recording industry. I believe that recording technology has actually gone about as far as it can go in this direction and good engineers with good studios will still be in demand. There's really no barrier to entry at this point for recording and no matter how much recording technology moves forward it will still take time and dedication to master the craft.

That'll be $10/minute for the psychic reading......

[bloodsuga]

Bands will operate as if they are individual businesses. Advertising, promotion, recording, it will all fall under the hands of the artists and their managers. Of course this puts record companies on the outs, technology is not in their favor. However, record companies will still remain as the foundation by which music is distributed and sold. It is a simple business model they teach in first year finance classes

High Risk = Large amounts of capital ( possibly high returns )

Record companies are suffering and will not have the money to invest in completely managing a band. Thus, they will not be able to totally invest in an unknown artist as they once used to. Think of how much money was spent just so ashely simpson could sell a million records. Instead, artists will deliever a complete package, using the record company as a means for mass distribution. This means it is back to good ole grass roots. Get people to go to shows. I cannot stress the importance of gaining an audience through live shows. Record sales have suffered a huge decline, yet concert attendance and music consumption is at an all time high. In short, more people are experiencing music in many different ways. This is an opportunity for gear heads and musicians like us. Though any nut can record an album, it takes experience, and education to make a good album, which in turn will sell and attract people. Enjoy the ride, go back to the basics. Create distinct music geared towards a distinct audience and make them faithful.

[warhead]

I picture it as 2017.

Some force with mass appeal and broadband delivery will develop a model where virtually any band worth any salt will be able to market their music but not for much financial gain. This force will not be one of the majors, but rather younger brains ie YouTube / MySpace. The old tired corporations are too busy taking care of themselves to figure out what people actually need or want. They have proven that post-Napster.

It will be choices galore, tons of music consolidated into one broadband provider. Either subscription based or advertising revenue will turn the profit. No matter how you slice it, it will eventually be better once bandwidth is not an issue for delivery of any media you want at anytime. I mean, the sound will actually improve from mp3 not only because it sounds better but because we don't have to compress to deliver to half the people.

If somebody told you in 1980 that cable TV would literally deliver thousands of channels and instant movie playback on demand...and we're only scratching the broadband surface...it would have seemed crazy.

War

[bloodsuga]

Another thing to consider is world markets. The average household income is rising, especially in places like India and China. These countries are also, for the first time, adopting a five day work week which means more liesure time. More money spent on things like...music. Hopefully America will always dominate the entertainment industry, but i could see record companies shifting focus to overseas distribution since many of the citizens lack the technology for things like ipods and internet. In the short term companies could capitalize on this very issue. We are already seeing this shift with the emergance of hard-core bands in Japan. There are 22 year old kids who can't walk down a street in tokyo or india without being notice, yet no one even knows who they are here.

[El Fatso]

in music connection magazine there was an interview, i think it was with the guy that runs taxi, he was saying in the future music will be a rental service. anywhere you go will have some sort of player that will have access to every song. so anywhere you go, you input your username/password and you have all your playlists up and ready.
he also suggested that with many indie artists starting their own labels and selling their own music online, that there will be a musician middle class. as opposed to the current millionaire rockstar and starving indie artist.

[bloodsuga]

Originally Posted by El Fatso

in music connection magazine there was an interview, i think it was with the guy that runs taxi, he was saying in the future music will be a rental service. anywhere you go will have some sort of player that will have access to every song. so anywhere you go, you input your username/password and you have all your playlists up and ready.
he also suggested that with many indie artists starting their own labels and selling their own music online, that there will be a musician middle class. as opposed to the current millionaire rockstar and starving indie artist.

Yup! this is another great possibility and I would recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Music-M...e=UTF8&s=books

The only problem is that copyright law would have to change for this to take place. It's an idealistic, utalitarian point of view, but none the less a great possibility.

[henryrobinett]

The music, by and large, will be even crappier. Few people will know how to play instruments and nobody will miss it. Music will be almost entirely created on computers. Guitars will be virtual. Touring bands will be people with iPod sized controllers and most "performers" will just dance and pretend to sing. The public will be more interested in watching "videos." So concerts will begin to be a thing of the past.

All music will be downloaded. But most people won't be interested in downloading music without the video that comes with it. The labels will still be strong but will have changed. There will be room for independents but the internet will have become commercialized and owned by conglomerates making exposure difficult.

Music will not really be an art form any more. The music that gets promoted will be music that is used to sell products, almost period. So each artist will have a sponser like Shell, Gulf Western, Cadillac.

More shock.

There will always be the odd renegade musicians who play, but hardly. They won't have the capital to perform. No venues and you need a sponsor.

[TheReal7]

Definitely some interesting perspectives here.

[mamcdonald]

Originally Posted by 8th_note

10 years from now you will be carrying much more of your life's data with you. That includes your music. Owning your music will be on the way out and renting your music will be much more prevalent than it is now. You will have a monthly subscription like XM radio but you will be able to choose the content at any time. If you feel like listening to Tool you'll dial that up. Next song or album you listen to could be Fleetwood Mac. You'll have access to virtually every piece of music ever recorded and for a flat monthly fee you can listen to as much of it as you can stand.

No need to wait ten years: Rhapsody.

[manofsong]

After reading Henry Robinett's post above I must agree that the continuing degradation of the industry as a profitable one for traditional performers in western culture is inevitable. As an example -- being able to play a guitar, even very well, will be more of a novelty rather than something that will ever blow people away again. Jimi Hendrix blew people away because he made sounds nobody had heard before, in a market that had fewer listening choices than today. Guitar was also a very "understood" and prominent instrument at the time, so Jimi's talent was easily recognizable.

But today, choice and access are everything, with attention spans getting shorter. Guitar now is only one of a myriad of "sounds" out there -- picture the thousands of customizable synth sounds we hear now. And even in the world of guitar there are now a hundred accessible Jimi Hendrixes, either because it's easy to record all the "unknown" amazing guitarists, or because Pro Tools can let an amateur player fake incredible solos.

There will always be strong niche markets for amazing musicians/producers/bands/labels (i.e. whatever creates great product) -- but it will be less lucrative in the traditional record-then-tour manner thanks to choice. I haven't yet seen (but hoped for) the "1 cent times a million downloads" or equivalent model make every musician's career as predicted in the 1990s.

That said, there are more paid classical orchestras than there ever were a hundred years ago.

[daveseviltwin]

Not going in depth but I think labels eventually will stop fighting downloading and find a better way to market tunes so that people stop stealing everything online. Something similiar to going to blockbuster and renting a video which means more encryption etc. Call me crazy but I feel like we'll hit a good cycle of very creative musicians and producers and engineers in the neat future. I just don't feel like we've gotten to the point that we've heard everything yet and I just have hope that things will change soon in the industry. I feel like the purist approach is cycling back around soon...

[thenoodle]

Hey Henry Robinett...I don't know you at all....but you are absolutely right. I think anyone who's been through 3 or 4 decades of this gets what's going on here with the history flow. It's all over baby. Gone like the big band era and the circuits and systems and biz that revolved around that culture. Gone. Poof. Not everyone understands it yet.

Guitars-bass-drums-keyboards-singers? Making recordings? For a living? And playing in front of people on circuits or tours? And making a living? Ha-ha-ha-ha. People actually used to do that full time and make money doing that?

The industry? Poof. Gone. History. We're in the dying days. It was only a really big thing for 30-40 years anyway. A blip in time. Like blacksmiths as an industry. ...a great living when everyone rode horses.

Next to fall after the music biz.....the movie industry. Give it 20-30 more years. Movie industry. Gone. Poof.

[somedude74]

Music will play on Macs only and not on PCs due to PCs sucking harder in 10 years.

[Dirty Halo]

The recording, producing and distribution of muisc will continue to head where it already IS... in the hands of the arists.

BUT, major labels will NOT go away... thier roles will simply evolve.

Major "labels" will become a form of advertising and promotion agencies.

Why? First, the above. Artists can do the first part just fine. But realistically, bands don'thve the time nor general skills sets (why should they?) to bother with promoting their music. Imagine how much time it takes to arrange and manage billboards, ads, campaings, etc. (An industry of which I know well).

So "signing" to a label" wil be like signing to a "promotions" company for a cut.

When bands like "Pink Martini" can make millions NOT being on a label simply because they got their CD into Starbucks, you know where the choices are headed.

My two cents.

-a

DIRTY HALO www.dirtyhalo.com

[Mike Caffrey]

Bands are going to make more money than ever before, but they won't make a penny selling songs.

Labels will disappear and bands will be signed by ad agencies. They'll be sponsored like race car drivers. The brand names won't be quite as literal, but they'll be making they living selling merch, not music (as they relatively have been for the past 30 years).

There's a chance that quality of the music will matter more, since it will be the tool to create the fame to leverage the sales for the corporate brand.

[HEADROOM]

HOWEVER....the music download will be the format in the future (and will get better )

The CD will be a merchandising product you can buy after a gig , like cups and hats.

Aren t Metallica already selling more T-shirts than records?



www.nickoosterhuis.com

[Matteran]

Originally Posted by GTR

Music will play on Macs only and not on PCs due to PCs sucking harder in 10 years.

or macs will be PCs? yes, i think so.

nice replies guys, these are very interesting point of views.

[cortisol]

On crack and in the gutter!

Peace,
cortisol

[henryrobinett]

Yeah, but does anyone want to jump 50 to 100 years?

I think the "industry" will be huge. It will basically be owned by what I'd call the government. All music creators will be employeed by said government and their identities will not be known. There will be no live human performers. It will be all virtual. Music, like most things in this world will have a purpose, and that purpose is control. There will be forced drugging, but they won't call it that. The Mental Health workers will come up with a name and a reason.

What will have been discovered is that freedom is great and all, but it's too messy. If it failed here in America, it can't work anywhere. But due to the ongoing terrorists, freedom has been redefined. So they still call it "freedom."

The bands and music created in our era, much has been confiscated. There's an overall feeling of dread and fear perpetuated by the media and the government.

So I think the music we love will have been morphed and redesigned or "disappeared." There will still be creative beings but they'll be way underground.

But the years leading up to this music just got worse and worse. What passed for singing we wouldn't recognize. The music became an electronic pulse that can be felt organically. Monotone.

And the messages aren't any longer just for selling or buying products. They're control messages created by the Mental Health Agencies.

[Sigma]

personally i believe all current media storage for individual use will be outmoded and music and video will be available streamed on a subscription basis...

which i think would be great..all the worlds libraries..no space taken up for storage medium..no degredation over time or theft/destruction of medium... for the end user

i have beeen saying this and wishing it for years..

in the mean time i enjoy Pandora.com for music tailored to my tastes

[quietdrive]

The government will somehow be able to monitor its citizens on the internet just like they do in real life. They'll know what will go on on your computer at all times. Kiss your privacy goodbye guys! As soon as you go online they'll be watching you. And if you download any kind of files, a program will automatically check whether or not you're illegally downloading them. In case you're, a secret alarm will cause the police (or the internet police) to show up at your house, arresting you for virtual burglary. No shit. People will soon be scared to steal stuff on the internet just like they are in real life. You dont just go in a store and steal a CD or DVD cause you feel like it, do you?

[Mike Caffrey]

Originally Posted by HEADROOM

HOWEVER....the music download will be the format in the future (and will get better )

The CD will be a merchandising product you can buy after a gig , like cups and hats.

Aren t Metallica already selling more T-shirts than records?



www.nickoosterhuis.com

I can't tell you the number of t-shirt sales, but the total revenue for the band has almost certinaly always been higher from merch than albums sale. Not jsut for Metalica, but for every band.

The CD may be a merch product if they're even still made. How many record stores are there in New York City now? I mean a place that sells only new albums, not used CDs and vinyl. I think just two, unless you count B&N. There's the Virgin Mega Store in Times Square and the Virgin store in Union Square and even those sell books and videos too.

Where will you buy CDs five years from now? And if the CD disappears, is it a sure thing that MP3s will be replaced? Will the technology be used to increase file size or leave the file size the same and have a 200gb iWatch?

Unfortunately, the latter is probably more likely which means there's a possibility of not commercially releasing full bandwidth music.



All we'll need is iSong software to interface with Garage Band and then we can all program web bots to post here on our behalf about the songs our computers are writing and recording for us.

[nandi]

it's interesting seeing people trying to forget what they know about the future but don't wanna hear about. 2012 is an year when something special and unique will happen with the planet Earth, something strictly hidden by the authorities (what will happen if the people would know that in 4 years all their debts will be erased?). Just do a research with keyword "2012" . after that...music will be acoustic only, soul and very spiritual oriented, very different. just imagine. tango? country? blues? ethnic? what culture? chinese music? who will survive?

music

[zooloo]

Originally Posted by nandi

it's interesting seeing people trying to forget what they know about the future but don't wanna hear about. 2012 is an year when something special and unique will happen with the planet Earth, something strictly hidden by the authorities (what will happen if the people would know that in 4 years all their debts will be erased?). Just do a research with keyword "2012" . after that...music will be acoustic only, soul and very spiritual oriented, very different. just imagine. tango? country? blues? ethnic? what culture? chinese music? who will survive?

music

The London Olympics isn't going to be that much of a shambles... is it?

[nandi]

cancel your tickets

[nandi]

but do the search

[zooloo]

Originally Posted by nandi

but do the search

I did and the London Olympics came up.

Please don't worry, even if the London games are SNAFU it's hardly the end of the world. It's just people running about and jumping around a bit.