How do industries adapt to the new world? Music, for one, is having a rough time. CD sales keep slipping. The music companies keep railing against "piracy", keep defending the indefensible; their own excess. Music was always organized to bring new musicians and music to the attention of consumers. The huge apparatus they constructed was "the industry." Yet they shot themselves in the foot, suing consumers when new methods of listening to music arrived.

It is that "industry" itself that is under challenge today. Not music. People like music. They want more of it. So just as technology took away the industry monopoly over delivery so to is it bringing answers. If Napster showed the way, iPod was first to leverage the  desire of consumers to get music easily and quickly, and, in a portable form. Both and others highlighted a new future and new possibilities.

Clearly, a new way of learning about music, obtaining it and paying for it was necessary. Chris Gilbey has written about Pandora which can automatically create a music list (a radio station) for you to sample. Last.fm is another way to find music you might like.

Pandora is algorithmic. Last is social  recommendation. Music by reputation. Both fill the role of the music company in presenting to you music you might like, based on what you already like. Steve Krause has a long riveting comparison of the two. Why they might work. AVC comments intelligently on why he likes one not the other. So do others.

The important issue to note is that web 2.0 solutions are giving the consumer options. Just as we now all automatically turn to Google; search, appraise and then consume (the info, the commerce, travel, banking, whatever) the same thing is happening with music. It's search from a known (your preference) to an unknown (what's good I might like) and then consume (by downloading or, going to a music store)

Whole layers of "the industry" aren't needed. In fact, it won't be as dire as the industry predicted. The industry doesn't stop but changes. 

Much of the musical padding on collections disappears. If you can sample music before buying, weak songs won't be bought, thus won't survive. Consumers will build collections of individual songs and musicans on devices rather than collect CD boxes. They'll be able to reach out and make easy judgments about what they want to listen to.

Consumers will be able to sample podcasts. Know what others judgements are (a la Amazon) My Spaces and imitators will originate music that will bubble up into a public marketplace on consumer choice.  Any which way you look at it, "the industry" has lost control and the consumer is starting towards ascendency.

We might be surprised. But this will be the case in business after business. Its just music is the starting point for industry after industry.