1. CD sales will continue to tank

Sometime in the next twelve to eighteen months CD sales are going to decline so precipitously as to cause the major labels to rethink their digital strategy. With the iTunes Store no replacement for discs, they’ll be forced to authorize a new method of distribution, just to maintain their bottom lines.

You’ve seen this movie. With film. For fifteen years seers predicted digital would eclipse the old format. This finally happened a year ago, when Konica Minolta exited the camera business and Nikon essentially stopped making film cameras. Same thing is going to happen in the music business, with CDs, it’s just a matter of when. The most interesting point is how the usage of music will change. People shoot MANY MORE digital photos than they ever did film ones. People will own MUCH more music than they did in the physical era. This is good.