Ted Gioia -or The Honest Broker; which I highly recommend- posted a few days ago: Nine Predictions for the Future of the Music Business. First I'd suggest a 10th prediction: a new cohort of companies cooperatively owned by the artists themselves, the workers and/ or the community.
Two recent examples I'm very excited about: Hearing Things -or the next cooperatively owned Pitchfork [i.e. music journalism]; and Subvert -launching today; join me and many other artists, labels and supporters and become a founding member- or a collectively owned Bandcamp successor [i.e. online record store and music community].
Like many people my age back then -early teens- I was an avid Napster user. Then I got very excited about Spotify and have been a paying member for many -many- years. That being said, I can also say I'm not satisfied today with my own relationship to music, how I experience it, how I consume it, how I reflect on it, how I share it with my kids and invite them into it.
Which makes me very excited about two things: (a) the live music resurgence -and I've been a Sofar Sounds advocate for a little while- and (b) the physical music sales revival -be it with vinyls at first, but now with CDs too and we should include into this overall merch' -but done right ok?
Now that my kids turned 5 and 3 yo and that I can tell they love listening to music, they love dancing obviously, I feel a desire to make them 'touch' and 'smell' and 'feel' music more than just pushing a random button on a little black screen -which reminds them inherently about the next possible animated show to watch. So I think we'll (re)buy a turntable soon and start curating a new collection.
I'm watching DJ Mehdi -great- documentary these days; which might definitely play a role in all this; this guys was just incredible.