Thursday, January 04, 2007

My 2007 Predictions

I decided to jump on the bandwagon and offer my own predictions for the coming year. Some of these are probably more wishful thinking than predictions. Here they are, in no particular order:
  • We will see at least one more merger of two of the remaining four major record labels.
  • Several major artists will sue the RIAA for a cut of the action from all the lawsuits they have been engaging in.
  • Digidesign will finally realize that the track limits on LE systems are hurting their business, and they will remove them.
  • Digidesign will also finally add MIDI notation editing to Pro Tools, due to their recent aquisition of Sibelius.
  • Several unsigned artists will break into the Billboard Top 100 (I'm not even sure this is possible yet, but if it is, it will happen this year.)
  • Movies will be even worse than they were in 2006.
  • Reality TV shows will begin to decline in popularity, because they have run out of ideas.
  • The Police reunion tour will happen, but get cancelled halfway through when Sting and Stewart Copeland get in a huge fight and they both quit.
  • Millions (okay, maybe thousands) of Windows users will switch to the Mac.
  • The music industry will begin moving away from DRM, finally realizing that it doesn't really work. Amazon's upcoming DRM-free digital download service will be a big hit! However, iTunes either won't remove their DRM implementation, or they will do it too late, and they will lose a significant market share. iPod Sales will not suffer as a result, however.
  • Nine Inch Nails will release a new studio album, only two years after their last one, finally breaking their pattern of a new album every 5 years (ok, I actually know for a fact this will happen, so I suppose it's cheating.)
That's all I can think of for now. If you have any predictions, feel free to comment!
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2 comments:

Joel G Goodman said...

concerning DRM - i dont' think apple will lose much market share if what you are predicting happens. the only people who really care about DRM are musically inclined computer geeks. most people own an ipod and will put whatever will play on an ipod on it... i think drm free will be awesome, but if apple's late on it, it won't affect their sales. besides, they only implement FairPlay because of the industry.

Unknown said...

You're probably right about it not affecting sales. I should point out, though, that the industry is actually changing their position on DRM, and that's why I made that prediction. I'm just worried that when Amazon comes out with their DRM-free download service in March, they will cut into iTunes sales.

Even if Apple removed the DRM protection, they still offer their downloads in a file format which is not universally compatible with other types of players. I've always felt that was a risky, although typical, move by Apple. Don't get me wrong, I'm still an Apple fan. However, I was an owner of one of the Mac clones back in the late 90's, and they left alot of us in the dust when they suddenly decided to kill the clone program. That was Steve Jobs' first decision when he returned to Apple, btw.

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