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After Mp3's?

I've had this discussion with friends before.

One of them has an idea which he is almost certain of. He believes that Flash Drives and USB Sticks will be the way of the future. Those thumb drives are getting big enough to hold 16gb and more.. more than an iPod touch.

They are incredibly cheap as well, so I can see instead of cds people will start putting things on flash drives for distribution. You can also build usb into cars fairly easily, making cds almost useless. The quality would be just as good as anything else as well because of the carrying capacity.

There's already a whole section at my local Wal-Mart with several major artists' latest albums on SD. They even sell little SD players, stacked right above them in case you're not so tech-savvy.

Not much of a selection, but then, I don't listen to pop music that isn't a few decades old anyway.
 
This is just general speculation, but based on current trends I believe synthetic stars will be with us in the not-so-far future. That is, computer-engendered, realistic, virtual "artists", existing only as protected software. "Their" personalities, looks and careers will be planned, launched, updated and extended indefinitely, which is ideal for the industry of popular music. In conjunction, I can imagine that it will be possible to do satellite-relayed holographic 3D projections of "live" shows simultaneously all over the world. Physical touring will go the way of the oxcart.

Read William Gibson's Idoru. Unless you already did.