As I sit here at the end of an eventful year, it feels like we’ve made a lot of progress in digital music, but we have such a long way to go. My wish is that the gains we’ve made are the basis for the digital music landscape we’ve all dreamed of.

The Internet was supposed to be the ultimate leveler, great music would be able to find its audience, the ‘big label’ gatekeepers would no longer control access to the masses. It hasn’t exactly played out that way.

For nearly four years, I’ve been evangelizing the transition of the music industry from a product-based business to a service-based economy. I’ve never viewed this as a possible scenario but as the only eventuality. It’s going to happen, it’s got to happen, now maybe sooner than later. With Apple’s acquisition this week of LaLa, the cloud-based music service that started out as a CD swapping marketplace, the Cuppertino giant appears to be making moves toward launching a cloud-based music service.

TAG hosted a Digital Music Salon at the Gibson Showroom in Beverly Hills. Participants represented Rhino Records, MySpace, Playlist.com, Big Champagne, Music.com, Music Mastermind, Emblem Music, Aderra, LA Times, New Music Tipsheet and others.

Sponsored by Hello Music and MIDEM.