The decade in ideas: local artists, DJs, studio heads, and tech geeks discuss the past and present in music

Bryn Boughton: The good thing for the industry is that music consumption overall is up. People are streaming and listening to more music than ever — that's good, but how can you actually create a business out of that? That's the quandary.

David Hyman, founder and CEO of MOG.com: There's going to be a massive switch from purchasing to subscription models where it's all you can eat, it's all in the cloud. Possession isn't that exciting when it comes to a digital file. Labels had to deal with the transition from CD to download, and now they're gonna see the complete disappearance of the download.

Tim Westergren: Licensing. The biggest obstacle right now is a portable, simple mobile licensing structure for music.

RJ Pittman: You look at things like subscription models, which haven't worked very well, and you see a lot of companies providing free streaming services, which are great, but they're very difficult to sustain financially because the ad revenue isn't keeping up with the licensing costs of giving away music.

Studios

Tim Green, Louder Studios, the Fucking Champs: A whole new generation is being raised on an inferior medium (MP3s), and most often listening on shitty players, computer speakers, and even cellphones. Thus the audio quality standard is lowered, and the demand for high-quality recordings is diminished. I've already seen recording budgets drop significantly in the last eight years. All right, I'll get off the soapbox ... these kids today, etc. 

John Vanderslice: How do bands deliver their music? People are completely ignoring the idea of a release. They'll put up content, tour, do a remix record for free, and then print up a 7-inch [laughs], and why not? The 45-minute album is an arbitrary limitation, [but] without the cues, how are bands going to identify with a completed work?

Jeffrey Wood, Fantasy Studios: Music is so overly used in all advertising, people have devalued it. We spend time trying to make the sound great, and then people play it on an MP3. Because music has been so devalued, how do you bring it about in a new way — on the Internet, on television, or in a film, morphing it with visuals, moving into other formats besides just music.