Hip hop will further decline. Every year it’s gotten a little worse. Drake and Iggy Azalea somehow bucked the trend. If it wasn’t for producer DJ Mustard carving out his signature pop / hip hop sound, it would all but be dead in the mainstream.

It just got stale. Nobody is coming up with anything innovative except for Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. Everybody sounds like everybody else and it became a caricature of itself. Hip hop had a great reign. A 20 year dominance. But music for better or worse, is always evolving and if you don’t evolve the sound, it will die a cold death. Hip hop has done itself in the same way 80’s hair bands did. It’s a niche sound now. Never take your audience for granted.

– Major labels will continue to dominate the airwaves of top 40 radio. It’s just too hard to break through radio without some kind of behind the scenes marketing support. All the labels have the relationships with the radio programmers. It’s politics. Plain and simple. Major labels still hold the keys to the radio airwaves and it’s not gonna change anytime soon.

– Rita Ora is going to be the breakout artist of the year. She’s already technically a “celebrityâ€, but mainly in the UK. This year she becomes a household name. She has an album coming out this year that I hear is amazing. A role in the upcoming movie 50 Shades of Grey that every woman in America will probably go see while they drag their husbands along with. Plus, she has the same brilliant management team that helped break Iggy Azelea and Lana Del Rey. It’s the perfect storm. 2015 is the year of Rita Ora

-Spotify will get heavy streaming competition. Look to see new upstarts try to knock Spotify off it’s throne. Youtube already is the place everyone goes to hear a song quickly. But it’s making it’s own fully streaming service just like Spotify. Will be interesting. One thing is for sure, streaming only becomes a more dominant form of the way we listen to new music.

-The concert business will only get stronger. The economy is better. It’s the best way to experience music. And now, it’s really the only guaranteed money for artists anymore. It’s their bread and butter. So they have to tour now more than ever. Madonna was music’s top money maker in 2013 earning 34 million dollars. 32 million was just from her tour. That left 2 million just for all record sales. It’s a sad truth.

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