Elbows Music Blog Community

OMG, another one of those thread... :P

Devices:
- nobody buys iPod and PMP anymore. It's all Android tablet, mini tablet or smartphones. with Apple also runs, dwindling to sub 15% (US). Globally Apple is as relevant as their laptop/desktop, not worth mentioning.
- 7" will see the bloodiest price war. The low end reaching sub $100, some $80. This has the same performance as original Nook color (single core 800mHz). So nothing to scoff at. (good enough for Ebook, multimedia, game, internet, mapping, camera)
- 10" tablet will  reach $300. cheap accessories (keyboard, controller, dongles) Most people buy $400-450 models.
- Low end smartphones  $150 without subsidy. first generation android, in term of performance. First golden age of smartphone.

The biggest addition is NFC and better networking between devices for Android 4.0. So now people can hear music in their stereo from Android devices. This feature will slowly added reaching 40-60% by year end. This is the killer feature for music.

People will begin abandoning low end laptop en masse and start using tablet instead (It's cheap and it works for basic task)
 I think by late next year reader will start demanding web page to be tablet friendly. (finger clickable)

2012 will be the year people start asking, do I really need desktop? (probably still do)

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economy continues to go sideway, with very high youth unemployment. Food and gas will be expensive. They will keep printing money trying like some mad doctor injecting liquid cocaine on OD patient.  Life will be much worst for people who doesn't have  .... much much worst for general music fan. (16-28)

Big labels relevancy will continue to dwindle (I mean, you don't need to be some sort of savant to figure this one out, considering their number and performance in the past 2-3 years.)    3 big one left. Universal. Sony. WMG.   They very much becomes relic. No more vitality left.  Their relationships with giant e-store and streaming service don't change a thing, only lengthening their pointlessness.

Indie labels? (...life is going to be hard. nobody has money)

  television power start to fade as well, as people tune out and go online for entertainment, news and chat.

At no time in internet history do music blogs have so much freedom. Unfortunately nobody is in charge manufacturing "taste". So music blog has new task, actually create order in the chaos. Worst case scenario, it's  another day online where everybody spewing stuff and random bits.

Non iTune e-stores and net radio start to gain credibility as there are more smartphone and tablet out there. Unfortunately the Apple-Amazon wallgarden approach will face a backlash. (spying, censorship, price gouging, glitchy service, hacking, etc)   People finally have had enough and good minority start to only accept non locked devices with alternate ROM.

all media will now slowly merge into smartphone/tablet. (audio, video, text) ...

Apple is going tapioca in 2012. They are utterly and completely fucked. ..... ($80-$150 vs. $499-$799, type of fucked. Rehash of late 90's when they are selling $3000 desktop surrounded by $1400 white labels)

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still not happening:

1. Record labels still can't get away from old concept of selling "album". It's still crappy album cover + crappy audio file + barely complete information.
All that smartphone processing 3D multi gigahurtz quad cores GPU chunk of silicon  thingie... and they still have same mp3 files like it's 1997.  It's effin' amazing, living digital fossil.

2. nobody else cares how to improve music files, since it means lawsuit galore, on top of crazy standard competition.

3. The concept of broadcast, performance, copyright, and all that BS legal construct probably finally collapse for real in practice. (The darknet is inside device ROM now. ) But they will continue to pretend they are in control... Probably passing yet more pointless law. While everybody running around with $80 high performance pocketable computer.  They have better chance convincing kids not to type naughty numbers in pocket calculator than trying to tell everybody what file should be in or out of $80 walmart tablet.

4. Google is still disappointingly lacking imagination. Probably still trying to re-do TV or some banal entertainment project.  D00d, move on to next one already. nobody gives a fuck except those who grow up watching TV. Just sell all you can eat high speed wireless for portable device and give everybody HDMI cable and skip TV industry altogether. What's the big deal about TV? Everybody who wants to watch a show already download those and watched it yesterday.

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expect major internet shake up, due to some stupid law or huge spying case being uncover. ... (I mean, have fucking plan already, this happens more and more often)

Obama re-elected. Nothing changes.