Comparing the feature sets of smartphones is not "Digital Music 2.0."  It's akin to manufacturers positioning the varying feature sets of 2 CD players in the 1980's as industry changing.  Maybe it would offer a slight difference in consumer experience, but it would have had no relevance to the music industry.  Every CD player with a play button accomplished the same goal as far as the labels were concerned… they helped move a new format of an existing product, the Compact Disc.  The features in the smartphones of the past 18 months continue to iterate and allow consumers increased flexibility with music, but have not significantly altered the landscape for the labels.

It's not an easy pill to swallow for an industry that has operated as a veritable ivory tower, but the shift to Music 2.0 has been happening for quite some time, in many ways, since before the dawn of Web 2.0.  Visionary artists have been evolving the business for nearly 20 years in numerous ways… Pearl Jam side-stepping Ticketmaster; Prince in too many ways to list; Trent Reznor and Radiohead with their continual online experimentation from album distribution/pricing to allowing fans to remix; Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Kanye West, Usher, et. al. for their innate understanding of how to springboard a music career into a platform to become brands in their own right.

Music 2.0 is about the labels and artists figuring out how to evolve and play in a space where they have to be nimble and creative in how they reach out to and embrace their consumers.  Since the commercialization of ".com" the music industry has repeatedly tried and failed to "go-direct" to consumers.  One big problem with their strategy is that labels have never had a direct relationship with the consumer.  Consumers have always bought artists… artists they discovered on the radio, and later on MTV… all in concert with the music industry.  And purchases happened at third-party stores.  The label's primary relationship with the consumer was deciding which artists got their mindshare in the form of their marketing muscle and collecting the resulting purchase dollars.

The music industry never was, or will be, about a label directly selling themselves to consumers.  Simply put, consumers don't know, or care, which label the artists they listen to are on… they care about the music. In addition to continuing to partner with digital music outlets (from iTunes to Pandora to Shazam), the labels need to convert their marketing muscle in a two primary ways.  First, establish relationships with the digital music decision-makers—blogs, music destination sites, social networks—namely the online radio station counterparts that can fill the same role in the digital space.  Second, transform their thinking about "destinations" on the web from being about label websites to creating meaningful destinations and experiences around their products, namely the artists.

“You will not recognize the music industry in five years from now" is most certainly a true statement, but hardly visionary… the same can be said of the music business for any five year period since "Internet 1.0."