The Future of Music at NXNEi

I recently had the pleasure of producing a roundtable, and subsequent panel, on the Future of Music for NXNE Interactive. Exploring the topic with the fellas at Kinetic Café, and moderating the panel with Alan, Richard, and Jake was a total pleasure. It was a pretty magical convergence of many of my great loves, and a juicy conversation to be had in the hologram tupac era, where we're not only exploring shifting business models (and waiting patiently for someone to do streaming well), but also seeing an increased emphasis on performance as a core differentiator for musicians. This runs the risk of becoming somewhat of an arms race, as more and more pop gains traction with their super deep pockets. This steady growth of media monopolies is pointing to a trend where content platforms becoming content producers (and vice-versa) - either Justin Timberlake is buying HBO, or HBO is producing Justin Timberlake at some point in the next few years. 

Our music libraries have been, and will continue to, fade into our greater media arsenal. I love my record player, but expanding my physical library is cumbersome. Being able to move music smoothly between devices is essential moving forward. My record player is almost entirely sentimental - the crackle and pop, and smoothness as it paired with my Mission speakers - and is actually kind of annoying to consider when moving apartments. What does an audiophile's music library look like a few years from now? Throw in a few terabytes of video content, and probably much the same.