Since the annual Midem Conference was last week, it’s now time for “Oh my God, what are we going to do next?” week. Mark Mulligan, of Forrester Research, scared everyone at Midem to death by declaring digital a failure. The reaction to his speech was so negative that he put an editorial in Billboard clarifying his position, and stating that digital is only currently a failure, but that things will get better as soon as somebody (anybody?) comes up with a new idea to capitalize on digital distribution. Needless to say, he offers no suggestions himself (to be fair, that’s not his job). Meanwhile, on another panel, BMG Rights CEO Hartwig Masuch declared that A&R was dead, since everybody could feed their music directly to the public without having to go through labels or a publisher. The other panelists vehemently disagreed with him, but then they would. Gatekeepers are more important than ever, they said, apparently failing to recognize that the role of gatekeeper has largely been taken over by the audience’s peers (that is, other members of the audience), who most likely have no real idea what they’re talking about. At the same time, word continues of MySpace’s imminent collapse, which causes Hypebot to chortle in glee. Meanwhile, Billboard, which stays ahead of the music industry by being only slightly behind everyone else, has started an “Uncharted” chart, which tracks the popularity of “undiscovered” bands on, you guessed it, MySpace, along with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking and music sites. On top of all of this, everyone’s still waiting for Apple, Google, Spotify and whoever else feels like it, to open their streaming service in the US (not to mention the upcoming, much needed, Rhapsody redesign). Meanwhile, label execs are playing musical chairs, not just with themselves (UMG Chairman Doug Morris has been invited to take over Sony), but with their companies, as Warner Music investigates the possibility of selling off their publishing division so they can buy EMI.
But with all that, there’s still a future for the music business, as demonstrated by this listing of the top 21 stars under 21.
Oh, dear God, we’re doomed.
