Yes I can research it - or at least I can research opinion and predictions - there's no end of people asking the exact same question, but I thought it would make for an interesting debate, I may be wrong. I'm not talking about how music will be accessed/bought, but how it will sound. You walk into a bar 70 years from now, what's being pumped into the place? The Rolling Stones will still be making albums, of course, but other than this what will it sound like? Is there a logical progression, and if so what is it? Here's but one prediction:
Speaking about the US, I think there's a "logical progression" until there isn't. ...That moment when someone says "F*** this!" and does exactly the opposite of the mainstream, and then that becomes the mainstream. Then rinse and repeat throughout the decades. Examples: Little Richard (although Elvis gets the credit), Beatles, Motley Crue (too lazy to look for umlauts ) during their time at the Whisky when all the other bands on the Strip were new wave, Nirvana... So I have no what the sound will be, despite having been, at one point, paid to guess and seek out such things. Oh except that I completely agree that the Rolling Stones will still be making albums.
I think you've pretty much nailed it, @Shenanigator. For tastes and trends (more so than with tech, where the natural progression is far easier to predict) we can make the future whatever we like, because no one can possibly predict it for sure.
It will be paint by numbers crap as it is now. <15 year olds will buy it and no one else will pay any attention, they'll Just stick on Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.
I'm not sure I even want to guess what instruments will be used in 70 years' time. Music's influenced by so much stuff - tech, culture, free time, distribution - it feels like a massive time horizon. I do wonder how well the kind of music that's being released now is going to last. I find it hard to imagine the world ever not listening to Ziggy Stardust, but tastes change. This seems to be a popular opinion, but I don't think it's true. If you don't think good music's being released these days, you're just not looking in the right places.
Music and the latest technology always work together. In the future, AI will drive the music, producing new innovations to inspire musicians. The AI will accompany or lead, depending on the musician. Computer-assisted-composing will be as common as computer-assisted-design.
Jukedeck is a great example of letting 'robots', as they call them make the music. You just select the genre tempo, tone, and a few other things, then the computers generates a song based upon your selections. The process takes roughly 5 minutes in total, and your can have a maximum song length of 5 min. This song was made there. Though I think that music will largely be about the same overall with some evolutions here and there.
Yamaha's vocaloid robot might finally be for reals. :3 Alas, I doubt there'd ever be one sound with the advances in tech and sharing. Music will only diversify more and more as people are able to find music more and more tailored to their taste..
I could imagine there to be mood sensing music. Essentially it will detect your mood and select appropriate music for it, either to amplify it so you can revel in your sorrow, or to counteract it and lift your spirits. That obviously gets more complicated in a bar setting, although I guess you can also sense the general mood in a crowd vs. that of an individual.
