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Sonny Smith: Creepy empires like Amazon.com. Who's selling what, and who is reaping your profits? Vinyl is exciting, like limited editions in the art world; small amounts are made and sold, then they sell out. If there are multiple pressings, you can keep track, whereas with CDs and digital files, there's no collectability aspect; there's never any end to it.
Logan Kroeber: The music industry has plenty of trouble coming its way in the next decade. There's a generation of kids who are growing up downloading everything and never owning any CDs or LPs. When all of us record-collecting dinosaurs start to fade away, the business model is gonna look pretty rough.
Claude VonStroke: The biggest issue this decade will be the same issue as every decade: crappy music getting popular.
The Jacka: Rap is re-creating itself again, like the beginning stages, [when] it wasn't as commercial.
Adam Theis: There are all sorts of little problems — like people not getting paid — but the main thing is that there isn't really a model to follow. That's going to be a huge problem for a lot of people, but that's also going to be a great advantage to a lot of people who have imagination. I think it's exciting, especially for bands who are doing different stuff.
DJ David Paul: Computers and the concept of "free" music. Computers made it easier to make music, but it has also made it easier to take music. I'd like a free computer, but if I try to take one from the Apple store, I'm sure I'll be arrested.
Kush Arora: The key holders of the music industry of the '80s and '90s still hold the top level of marketing and cash, and yet the indie music industry is completely self-sufficient. Setting up live venues in each city that can support the financial model of touring will be as important as weeding out old folks who keep screwing it up for everybody else.
DJ Jacob Sperber, Honey Soundsystem: Whether it's the digital-free-sharing music renaissance or the "war on fun" over live music venues and nontraditional underground events, things are a-changin'. It's gonna get real unpretty and then real, real fun.
DJ Jeffrey Paradise: Big record labels obviously took too long to adapt to the digital age. Now it's so easy to make music and to get it out there to people, the barriers to entry are so low that we are flooded with a lot of mediocre music.
Eric Frederic: Bands and labels are focused more on publishing, merchandise, and tour profits. You can't download a concert experience or a T-shirt. Creating unique real-life experiences and tangible objects that can be sold will have to fill the void left by album sales.
Odessa Chen: The growing expectation that music should be free. People have resentment toward the music business, and rightly so, but without money going to the artist, lots of musicians will be so busy working day jobs their output will decline, and we'll all lose out on their voices. As a small independent musician who doesn't have a label and doesn't make money touring, music sales enable me to produce more music. An indie CD can cost about $10,000 to produce. I'm not sure people really understand that.
Juan Manuel Caipo: Labels, promoters, and radio need to coexist and embrace the indie mentality. People will download new music or listen to [a band] on Pandora for free, and if they like it, they'll buy a concert ticket and a shirt next time they come into town. The industry will have to figure how to offer people more for their money.
Tech
Phil Bernosky, senior director of electronic media at Dolby Laboratories: The music business struggles to find a growth model. No longer is good music a scarcity, it's now a commodity simply because all the talent in the world can afford to create professional content. When it is no longer a scarce resource, the price necessarily drops.Kevin Arnold: The biggest challenge is to settle into the new digital world as a business landscape. The physical decline will continue, and we still aren't quite there yet, with regard to the majority of the music sales being digital. The second phase of change is gonna be the really challenging part of the overall transformation.
Bryn Boughton: The good thing for the industry is that music consumption overall is up. People are streaming and listening to more music than ever — that's good, but how can you actually create a business out of that? That's the quandary.
David Hyman, founder and CEO of MOG.com: There's going to be a massive switch from purchasing to subscription models where it's all you can eat, it's all in the cloud. Possession isn't that exciting when it comes to a digital file. Labels had to deal with the transition from CD to download, and now they're gonna see the complete disappearance of the download.
Tim Westergren: Licensing. The biggest obstacle right now is a portable, simple mobile licensing structure for music.
RJ Pittman: You look at things like subscription models, which haven't worked very well, and you see a lot of companies providing free streaming services, which are great, but they're very difficult to sustain financially because the ad revenue isn't keeping up with the licensing costs of giving away music.
Studios
Tim Green, Louder Studios, the Fucking Champs: A whole new generation is being raised on an inferior medium (MP3s), and most often listening on shitty players, computer speakers, and even cellphones. Thus the audio quality standard is lowered, and the demand for high-quality recordings is diminished. I've already seen recording budgets drop significantly in the last eight years. All right, I'll get off the soapbox ... these kids today, etc.John Vanderslice: How do bands deliver their music? People are completely ignoring the idea of a release. They'll put up content, tour, do a remix record for free, and then print up a 7-inch [laughs], and why not? The 45-minute album is an arbitrary limitation, [but] without the cues, how are bands going to identify with a completed work?
