Last week I had the pleasure of attending a roundtable event in conjunction with Intel (and their Intel Studio initiative) that discussed a very grand subject – the future of music. It’s a big subject, and one that, for some reason, everyone’s got an opinion on in the technology world. In conjunction between that event and thoughts I’ve been having for a long time on how music will change in the future, here’s six tenets that I think will permeate the next wave of music creation and discovery:

1. 1)Music must be sharable – word of mouth is more important than ever
2. 2)Revenue must come from multiple sources – if one bit of the industry becomes obsolete, it shouldn’t sink the whole ship
3. 3)New technologies are to be welcomed and understood, not feared and litigated against
4. 4)A&R can be crowdsourced, but remember the long tail
5. 5)”Added value” is key – give people a reason not to pirate things – carrots, not sticks
6. 6)Your artists are your most important spokespeople

I’ll go into detail about each one over the next six weeks – but today, I’m going to discuss the first in the list – how essential it is to be able to easily share music. Click over the jump for my thoughts.