Maybe you'll think that I am a very conservative person or an old man stuck in his youth, but do you believe that this and the future teen will have the luck to see groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Santana, Who ? I personally don't believe it. The massive consuming society and TV shows like the X Factor, American Idol, creates only tiny comets with maybe one hit and 5 minutes of fame. Not to mention the free downloads of tones of music and video clips that hit the music industry. Lets hear your opinions.
Music never had a future for me, as I don't even like it. But downloading music is running corner store music businesses out of business. They lower cd prices to like .99 cents and still no one buys.
I don't believe so - ringtones and downloads have taken over. As long as we have the internet, music will fail.
I listen to music every day, its a huge part of my daily life. I like listening to lots of different kinds.......
I don't think that "music will fail", that makes it sound like music is going to just disappear. That's impossible. The quality of music seems to have gotten worse at the moment and yes, the current record industry appears to be nearing a crash, but that's for the better. Just because the medium has changed, doesn't mean that music is dead. It will just take a while to get some quality music back. You think that when tv's were introduced and started televising bands and performers people weren't freaking out? I'm sure there were people that thought 'oh no, now that they see them on the tv there will be no need to see them in concert' etc... Same arguments could be said for the film and television industry, they have lately been making lots of regurgitated rubbish but they too need to change with the times. Sorry to keep ranting but one final argument could be made that, at least here in the states, school funding for the arts has been decreasing yearly. With less and less money going to educate the youth on things like music (including the history of and theory) how do you expect them to make anything good?
People still buy Drum n Bass. I can gaurentee that you would not find the UK Drum n Bass I listen to on the internet available to download for free. After big raves they launch 5/6 CD DnB mixtapes that cost about £20 each. Everybody I know that owns them own legitimate copies.
FOR ME: YES! MUSIC STILL HAS A GOOD FUTURE! WE MIGHT NEVER BECOME LIKE THOSE GOOD ARTIST FROM THE PAST, BUT I BELIEVE WE CAN HAVE A MUSIC OF OUR OWN! LONG LIVE, MUSIC INDUSTRY!
There are still tallented people that make music and make it for pleasure, not for money. And I think there will be always this kind of people.
Music distribution is changing just as it has in the past. I think mainstream sales are down because mainstream is crap these days. I don't think we'll be seeing a situation like in the 60s where the best music (critically) was also among the most popular. These days the best music is relegated to a sort of sub culture of people who are really into music. But I think the recent situation with Radiohead shows that bands/artists with imagination are still around and are finding ways around the staleness that is the mainstream music business. I love older popular music but I also love many more recent bands/artists. My #1 and #2 of all time would be The Beatles and Radiohead. They are from different generations but they both made/make intelligent & interesting music. In the end this is what will live on. The manufactured music of the mainstream comes and goes. It doesn't really matter. Truly the mainstream music industry isn't even about music anymore.
Interesting debate. As well as my IT interests I also run a small record label (as per my signature) and a video production company. We started the record label in the days when CDs ruled the world, things like Napster were in their infancy and sites like MySpace, YouTube, etc didn't exist. We've managed to adapt. Firstly we embraced the new technology. Our digital sales (via iTunes etc) long ago exceeded our income from the sale of physical CDs. However the CD is not yet dead. We still sell well through Amazon and through High Street stores. Don't ask me why people still buy music on CDs but some do, I guess there are a lot of older people who can't get on with downloading and would frankly prefer it if we went back to vinyl. We were also lucky that because we work in a niche market (celtic, modern classical and acoustic) our customers tend to 'play the game' and know that by buying the CD or download as opposed to stealing it they're 'patronising the arts' for want of a better expression. However our guess is that the next trend will probably be 'free music'. It's getting that way now with bands (Radiohead being a good example) giving their recorded work away as a way of enticing people to come to the concerts. Live music (and the merchandising spin-offs) will be where the money is in future. Also over the last few years it has become much easier for bands to do it themselves without a record label. For us the one plus side of this is we now never get requests from bands or solo artists saying "Please sign us". In the old days we used to get eight or nine a week. Some sent magnetic tape (anyone remember cassettes?) through the post and some of the more adventurous clogged up my 56k dial-up with huge attachments to emails. Now that music is so cheap to record and distribute people don't need small labels like us. So to answer the question, yes, music has a future. The way it's made and delivered will change (as it always has), but it will endure. Like comedy.
The music industry has changed. It's much harder to have "staying power" anymore. Groups get the backing of the major record labels, and then they fade away when their contract expires because all the labels are looking for the next big thing. The industry gained too much control, so much so that they could pick and choose who they wanted to be a hot group. They pay the new artists next to zilch in royalties and maintain the rights to the songs. Established groups tend to get higher royalties and more control, which is why they tend to get dropped from labels in favor of "fresh" artists. Bands are so eager to make it that they'll sign contracts giving away the rights to their first 3 albums for paltry sums of $50,000 or less. That pretty much locks them in for the duration of their fame, and sets them free when their popularity has waned. In summary, it's hard to think of more than a couple modern artists that people will be listening to 30 years from now. There certainly won't be enough to form radio stations (satellite radio by then, I'm sure) around modern music in the same way there are radio stations for 60's and 70's music today.