Music in the new millennium: Forecast calls for greed

We've come a long way in the 20th century, baby. Consider that when Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" premiered in 1913, the audience jeered, pelted the conductor and orchestra with anything they could get their hands on, then ran in horror from the theater, appalled by the shocking, degenerate "new music." Today, people are generally more tolerant of the music they hear on the radio, buy in shops, download from the Internet or watch on TV and in movie theaters.

The music industry, too, has grown up. In 1999, the biz is at last the slick, well-oiled machine it had been aching to become since its earliest days. Nobody makes a move without lots and lots and lots of planning and plotting, and no new performer can be a success without bowing to at least some of the industry's demands. Now more than ever, a performer must be a complete package of style and smoothness, image and Internet, and self-aggrandizement and sponsorship.

I'm over-simplifying and generalizing, of course. Regardless, I think the 1990s have dropped a few not-so-subtle hints about the future of music. Whether you love what you've been hearing or shake your head in mute disbelief every time you see (because the hearing part ain't what's important) Speed or The Back Street Boys, here are a few of my predictions for music in the 21st century.

Prediction 1: The movie soundtrack will become the hot product of the music industry. It's already hot, but it will become even hotter. Indeed, I predict the movie soundtrack will drive the music industry in the next century.

Until only very recently, soundtracks weren't even an afterthought of movie promotion. Apart from the original score, which rightly received a lot of attention and care from filmmakers, individual songs meant very little, unless the film dealt with music in one way or the other, like "The Rose," "The Jazz Singer" and "This Is Spinal Tap." Never was the soundtrack aggressively promoted ("The Big Chill" being one notable exception). In fact, only those who stuck around till the absolute end of the credits could read in small print, "Original motion picture soundtrack available on XYZ records."

Today, everything is reversed. The soundtrack figures prominently in the production, marketing, advertising and promotion of movies. It is music for the sake of music, a calculated business ploy to increase profit (or offset costs). For me, it is both intriguing and disgusting: intriguing because I like to see how the industry thinks and disgusting because it's all so calculated.

Prediction 2: More one-hit wonders. This genre of pop culture icon has been around forever. Some are lovable. Some are memorable. Most are neither. As the music market becomes supersaturated with slickly produced and packaged "artists" -- people whose musical offerings are the result of focus groups and other market research -- Billboard will be able to accommodate fewer and fewer of them. There will be a revolving door policy in the Top 10, the exception being established acts with the clout of, say, Madonna or Sean "Puffy" Combs.

We laugh at the Tacos, Falcos and Men Without Hats of the world, but at least we remember them. With a deluge of one-hit wonders appearing in rapid succession, their kitschy appeal will be lost, along with all memory of them.

Prediction 3: More prefab groups. If "Pinocchio" was set in the modern day, Geppetto would be cobbling together boy bands. Never mind the quality of the raw material -- that'd be primed, polished and marketed by Geppetto's record company.

You see, it takes too long for like-thinking musicians to meet, form bands on their own, work their way up through bars and clubs, gain depth and experience, cut demos and land a recording contract. So the suits axed the gestation period and began assembling their own groups. They're dressed, primped and instructed, then unleashed on consumers. Some are also phenomenally successful. And as long as there is a chance of big bucks, the modern-day Geppettos will have wood.

Prediction 4: "Talent" will continue to get younger and younger. The bottom line, in all senses of the expression, is that teens and preteens are developing beefier economic muscles. And if there's a demographic with disposable income, you can bet the industry will come up with new ways to lure it to the checkout line (or online). They've already come from "The Mickey Mouse Club"; look for tomorrow's pop stars to rise from high schools, maybe even elementary schools.

Prediction 5: More reunions. Didn't get to see Kajagoogoo before Jamal split? Miss Guns 'n' Roses, do ya? Don't fret, they'll probably do reunion tours. Why? Why was Kiss was on the cover of Forbes in 1996?

The Eagles' reunion set the tone for all reunions to come. They dubbed the $100-a-ticket outing as the "When Hell Freezes Over Tour," because that's when the original members always claimed it would be when they played together again. Well, cold cash dashed the flames of Hades. Now, everybody from band members and roadies to promoters, record companies and merchandisers know the full potential of reunions. Sure, many acts will refuse to come out of retirement for artistic reasons (ABBA is one example), but just as many won't for a chance at one last drink from the chalice of fame and fortune. It's human nature.

Prediction 6: The death of rock 'n' roll. This won't happen anytime soon, but it will happen in the next millennium. In a world that hails Buckcherry as the savior of rock, all we can do is pray that there are some children out there listening to their great-grandparents' Buddy Holly LPs, their grandparents' Grand Funk 8-tracks and their parents' Pearl Jam CDs, and that they'll be inspired to form bands. While heavy metal, death metal, speed metal, goth, thrash, industrial, techno and neopunk will remain and mutate, no new pure rock bands will emerge and the genre will be relegated to the history books.