I agree with your prognosis. I don’t think that the labels are going away completely; there will still be corporations called Warner Bros. and Atlantic and what not, but they will simply be licensing houses.

I think if you ask a regular person what “record label” is, they’d probably focus on the discovery and financing of new music. Is a label that doesn’t do that really worthy of the name?

A music industry populated with corporate licensing operations that don’t produce new music (wood-burning cars) and tiny net labels with tiny niche audiences that do (smart rodents) is exactly the post-apocalyptic world I was referring to…