Listening to music is currently a commodity. Only archaic laws, law abiders, and great efforts by some to have art exist in some physical medium that makes one desire to spend money on it keeps it afloat.

Soon all that will fail, and listening to new music online or on some physical medium such a CD/DVD/MP3 player will not cost you a thing. No matter how you try to proect it, people will break your protection and listen to it.

When all the major and small labels fail people will not cry out. People will not change their habits. And people will not lose out on listening to music.

A lot of untalented composers and musicians will be the losers.

People who want to make music, and aren't afraid to not make a dime on it, due to the near commoditization of creating music, will have ways of getting their art out there, though they won't be paid much to do it, and they won't make much back. Their income will come from certain fans who feel that they should reward the person who created it. Those who have heard of shareware know how this is. They also know how Doom made multiple millions of dollars, despite nobody being required to pay them a dime to really play. Being a millionaire from it will be a rarity. But there will be a few who do something amazing and groundbreaking enough that people will feel compelled to give them large sums of money.

Live music will change as well. It will actually go back in time a few hundred years. Certain quality composers will be paid decent money to create music which will be performed in a live setting. It will be performed by musicians who have studied their craft and become excellent at it.

Music will increase in compositional quality, though will probably when consumed in music halls it will be less experimental. It will be a form of pop music. Pop in the sense of 'popular' and it will range in styles from 'classical' to 'rock'.

You will still see traveling musicians like today. But all their money will be on their ability to perform live. This will lead to an increase in the quality of live performances, as unless you are being given good donations based on your recorded music, you will have to rely on entertaining listeners.

This is why I'm okay with all this. I don't need Century Media. I don't need Sensory. I don't need Nightmare records. I will have some of them though, or ones like them. They'll be making money by offering safe, non-virused music to be distributed. They'll make money based on advertisements or minor subscription fees.

There may still be investors in bands too. But they'll be more like banks, and bands will have to pay interest on the loans. Like banks do with loans today, banks will do their research to try to ensure that these bands have a chance of paying them back.