The Future of the Music Industry - Hip Hop Predictions

Author, Roni Poet

One can safely predict that Hip Hop will continue to affect the listening of music as a whole. Beats Electronics, the company Dr. Dre co-founded, owns 51% of an estimated 1 billion dollar premium headphone market. Recently, the Carlyle Group invested 500 million into the company. (Guzmán, 2014) Based on this, it can be predicted Beats Electronics will continue to dominate the headphone industry and the listener experience, making it closer and closer to being liken to a high quality studio. Also whereas in the past headphones were a free throw-in, headphones will continue to grow as a status symbol and an expression of Hip Hop culture, which has grown and will continue grow as a dominate music form.

There is hope in the future of Hip Hop being one where more and more people use it in a manner closer to its original intent – to address the ongoing struggles and disenfranchisement of oppressed people. People like Alridge promote that “socially and politically conscious Hip Hop shares common ideas and ideology with the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement and the larger Black Freedom Struggle” (Alridge, 2005) Alridge and others seek to bridge the gap between the generations by identifying common ground to stimulate dialogue. More and more artists perfect their craft daily – Killah Priest, Bahamadia, Sa Roc, K-Rino, Arkansas Bo, 607, Roni Poet, and 9th Scientist – and the underground Hip Hop scene continues to grow.

Whereas, female artists are gaining underground recognition their still exists the sex fetish barrier to overcome in the Hip Hop industry. With Nicki growing with her success in the industry, more and more women will continue to be marginalized as sex objects in Hip Hop. There is hope though as all great trends come to an end, could there be in sight women emcees receiving wide recognition who are not oversexed? Roni Poet, Sa Roc, Kilo Kish, Dutch ReBelle, Lee Mazin, Awkwafina, Brianna Perry, Noname Gypsy and others are making their way to break out of the box and portray women as much more than just sex commodities in Hip Hop.

As mainstream radio plays more and more music out of tune with what is happening on the grassroots level, people will continue to take their listening experience into their own hands. The need will put more money into companies that supply the demand - Beats Electronic new music subscription service Beats Music that uses music curators and personalization versus computer algorithms. They have partnered with AT&T’s millions of subscribers and with Target to deliver the music subscription services. Thus, Beats Music can be predicted to take over as the leader in music subscription services, likely to be bigger than Spotify and Pandora. (Beats, 2014)

Roni Poet, female emcee on the rise

References
Alridge, D. P., & Stewart, J. B. (2005). INTRODUCTION: HIP HOP IN HISTORY: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. Journal Of African American History, 90(3), 190-195.

Beats, M. (2014, January). Beats Music is Here. Business Wire (English).

Guzmán, I., & Rayman, N. (2014). Generation Beats. Time, 183(3), 42.