TWENTY years ago, a debate on the future of music would?ve been a pretty quiet affair. Ten years ago, there would?ve been some ripples of excitement and highfalutin talk of ?multimedia.?

Such a discussion in 2009 is a different matter. Those ripples lead to convulsions, and the music industry?not just the business but how music is actually created?is evolving at such a pace that prediction and even taking stock of the current situation is quite a brainstorm in itself.

We try to canvass what lies ahead.

On technology

iPods probably won?t be around, but samplers will. However, whether we will still have cheap electricity necessary to run them is something I very much doubt. As oil runs out, it?s hard to see our current technological near-utopia of WiFi/digital/music/mobile phone/video being of any long-term benefit in a world suddenly needing to service its needs locally again.

Electronic music, for example, has been a wonderful luxury. I?m not sure if people can run their amazing mixing desks with a wind generator.

On taste

The record industry and mass consumers will continue to prefer the shape and sound and bonny Beatles-y buoyancy of the electric guitar, and tons of Stoned/Kinked/Iggied riffs, because it reminds them of a time when things were safe and steady.

The reinvention of the ?80s still scares me actually. When Adidas started reissuing those garish outfits from the period and Madonna wore her purple leotards, my allergies started reappearing.

On record labels

Will record labels be dead and gone in a few years? They?ve been dying a slow, lingering death since vinyl was removed: The idea of a record company and a record?even a CD?will be viewed from the future as pretty much a late-20th-century event, with the downloading world a strange, almost quaint little interlude between when things could be touched, collected and fetishized over.

Effectively, the hardware companies will continue to sustain the situation they?ve always wanted?where pop culture is reduced to brightly patterned, strongly flavored, constantly flowing software that ensures the continued sale of technologically fancy hardware.

That said, the death of most institutions is predicted in the next decade anyway. It?s hard to see Starbucks surviving a big hike in transport costs. Making physical things and shifting them ?round the world must be a failing model.

Our lifestyle is fundamentally unsustainable and a correction is coming. In music, we?ll always need creative filters, guides to direct us through the mass of waste out there.

On the next big thing

The next big thing will be happenings, just like in the 1960s, only this time technology will play a part. Bands will have theme park-type destinations and smaller bands will be there, too, like sideshows. The imaginative revolution of pop culture will transform into a shameless worldwide circus of fun and games.

The musical equivalent of superpowers, a dozen or so monstrously sized acts dominating our dreams, acts that are the equivalent of small islands, little lakes, tiny hamlets, mysterious caves, passing clouds creeping into our dreams little by little?you will go there or tune in on any device for a subscription.

A timeline of how the beats and riffs have changed us

800
The King of France, Charlemagne, ostensibly lays the groundwork for the music industry when he requests that the Catholic Church produce the first unified music-notation system. 1200-plus years later and such platinum-selling artists as Kanye West can neither read nor write music notation, let alone proper English.

1597
Jacopo Peri composes the first opera, ?Dafne.? The plot is two parts Greek tragedy and one part soap opera?the cocksure Greek god Apollo gets shot down by a virginal nymph named Dafne after she has turned herself into a laurel tree. Some argue it?s the precursor to psychedelic rock.

1854
Stephen Foster rides the wave of the growing industry of mass-produced sheet music and becomes the first bona fide pop star. Many of his songs come out of drunken late-night jam sessions, where Foster and friends would sit around a piano, drinking rye and making up ?coon music.? Incidentally, over 100 years later, rock ?n? roll would be birthed under similar circumstances.

1928
Louis Armstrong records the song ?Muggles,? the title of which is slang for marijuana. Aside from being one of the first instances of drug use being celebrated in popular song, it was later appropriated by J.K. Rowling to refer to ?non-magical? humans, thus corrupting an entire generation of children.

1966
John Lennon causes controversy when he claims The Beatles are ?more popular than Jesus.? Which they are?among Jews, for sure.

1969
When the Rolling Stones play a free concert at Altamount Raceway in Northern California, they hire the Hell?s Angels to serve as security. The Angels end up brutally killing a man, bringing the free-loving spirit of the ?60s to a dark close.

1982
Self-appointed King of Pop Michael Jackson releases his benchmark album, ?Thriller,? which goes on to become the bestselling album of all time. Subsequently, prepubescent children the world over decorate their bedroom walls with pictures of the pop idol, who, ironically, is decorating his bedroom walls with pictures of them.

1991
?Nevermind? by Nirvana is released, launching the grunge era. While dance club owners the world over lament the reemergence of guitar-based rock, the flannel industry thrives.

2001
Two years after Napster popularizes Internet music piracy, Apple launches the iPod, which rings the death knell for the compact disc and the music industry as we know it.

2008
MySpace seals the deal to become the new outpost of the musical universe. Miley Cyrus serves a billion avid fans.