Hi, I'm Bobby Oshinsky.

In this podcast, I pull back the curtain and try to read where the music industry is heading, and 2026 feels like one of those years where anything could happen.

We're standing at the crossroads for creators.

Technology and the entire business are shifting at the same time.

Make no mistake, the choices made this year could shake music for the next decade.

Today, I'm sharing predictions that I believe will matter most for musicians, producers, and music pros.

If you want to understand where the momentum is building, how to stay ahead of what's coming next, you're in the right place.

Stick around.

I'm Bobby Oshinsky and this is the Inner Circle podcast.

Predictions for 2026.

Every year I make some predictions and sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong.

And sometimes it's sort of in the middle, right and wrong.

And there's plenty of everything this time.

So before we get to 2026, let's look at 2025 and how those predictions turned out.

So here's the first one.

there will be a revolt against AI.

yes and no.

This actually happened to some degree.

People don't like AI if they realize it's happening to them, if they're not prepared for it.

And yes, there is revolt.

Is it widespread?

Not yet.

So we'll give that one a maybe.

Thumbs up and thumbs down.

Here's another one.

Kind of the same way.

Immersive music work dries up.

Like I said in the 2025 review that I did last time.

There's not a big demand for immersive music.

Oh, people like it when it comes to movies and video, but not so much when it comes to music.

So there's no consumer demand for it.

That being said, sometimes it's just the opposite where people say I prefer the stereo version.

Yet there's still plenty of mixers that are out there doing lots of immersive work and good for them.

But I don't see this lasting.

So I think what started to happen is much of the music work died down, but it's still there, still out there, and people are still mixing.

I predicted that a new artificial reality experience will emerge and that didn't happen at all.

This was on the basis of the, Apple headset, and that seems to be a complete miss for them.

But I understand they are working on something new that's going to be less expensive.

And of course, we've come a long way in two years.

So in fact, something new may eventually turn up.

But it didn't in 2025.

Guitar center struggles again was another prediction.

Guitar center has been struggling with debt the last few years, probably the last five years, and this is very severe.

They had almost $1 billion in debt that they had to clear, and a lot of it was coming due.

But they've managed to stay the course.

I haven't heard about how sales were, but it must have been good for them to stay out of financial problems.

So that was a mis.

Here's a yes and a no.

Mastering engineer has become marginalized online.

High mastering has become really good.

Now, is it as good as a human?

No, not at all.

Is it good if you don't have any money?

Yes.

If you know how to use it.

Is it good if you have a lot of songs that you have to do?

For some people it do sync work.

For instance, that they have 30 titles.

So a mastering engineer at that point is not in the budget at all.

So mass transit, there's a finding that there's less work in general, but they still are working.

And the major labels especially will keep them working.

So have to say yes and no on this one.

here's a big swing.

Drones are outlawed.

I predicted for 2025, and that didn't happen at all.

reason for the prediction was that they were becoming disruptive for instance, when we had fires here, many times the drones were out.

these were consumer drones were out and prevented, fire drops from airplanes, for instance.

Concern away.

So things like that continue to happen, but less so in the last year.

I think we've heard that, maybe the drone phase has died down a little bit.

And it could be that people are kind of bored with them, or it just could be the people are afraid and learning that they can get in the way.

in 2025, I predicted the TikTok ban in the US would hold.

Now, of course, the end of 2024, Congress passed a law that said TikTok either has to leave the United States completely or divest to an American company.

And I was pretty sure this was going to happen.

In a way, it did, in another way it didn't.

So what happened was, President Trump decided that, this wasn't a good thing, and he put this ban on hold while trying to find, a number of American companies to take over, number of private equity companies.

And Oracle.

Oracle already works with TikTok in that they handle the database for them in the United States.

However, what's been happening is that TikTok is a Chinese company, and they never say anything.

So we hear things from the US saying, this is close.

The deal is close.

Nothing from the Chinese to indicate that's the case.

And also, we keep on hearing that, yes, you can buy this, but not with the algorithm.

And the algorithm is a secret sauce that makes it work.

So that's sort of a yes and a no because the ban is still there.

It could go into effect at any time.

But certain politicians are trying to, make sure that TikTok goes in the American hands.

This was a hit was a yes.

More video on social platforms.

What we're finding is YouTube is the most viewed social platform out of any of them.

And it's growing.

Use is growing both in shorts and long form.

Surprisingly enough, log form is doing very well.

seeing it in other platforms as well, but less so, but in general videos.

Now, the thing if you want of reality, you probably want to do something with video.

This was a big swing that missed, Netflix gets into music streaming.

Netflix is the perfect platform from his streaming because it's easy for them to get licenses.

First of all, they certainly have the infrastructure for it, and they have lots of subscribers already, so it'd be very easy for them to just switch many of those subscribers over.

Make it an extra charge, for them.

But, this didn't come to pass or even close.

Here's another one that missed X stops operating.

This is the platform formerly known as Twitter.

X still is going very well.

Well, not very well.

It's still operating.

It isn't growing.

There isn't a lot of, sponsors on it.

Advertisers.

So in spite of itself, it keeps on going.

And part of this was, kind of a genius financial engineering move where they took the, the investors that invested in X, basically, they said, okay, now we're going to convert your investment into x I and every investor wants to be in some sort of AI operation.

And Krok, which is from X8, is actually doing very well, the large language model.

So I was way off on this one.

This one is yet to be determined.

The US government wins the Live Nation lawsuit.

There's a lot going on in, Live Nation land.

If you don't know who Live Nation is, they control.

They own Ticketmaster, for instance.

They control most of the large venues in the United States.

And, they control the concert industry.

But there is, a number of lawsuits against them.

And then the United States government actually got involved saying that, they have a monopoly, especially since they own, Ticketmaster.

So there's a lawsuit and it's still pending.

It is looking more like the government might win, but that's yet to be determined.

Have you ever noticed that mixing vocals is often the hardest part of getting a track the sound right?

If you boost to compress, you add effects and it still doesn't feel professional.

So to make it easier, I put together a simple mini course on vocal mixing that walks you through the exact steps to get the vocal sound clear and upfront.

If you're interested, scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the show notes.

Now back to today's conversation.

Private equity investment record labels.

And yes, this did come to pass.

This is not a good thing for artists.

You want investors and you want record labels that really care about music.

Private equity cares nothing about music.

They care nothing about anything but making money and how much the shares are worth.

So one of the things that happened last year was Warner Brothers and, a private equity company, I think it was Bain, teamed up for $1.2 million, billion dollars to buy catalog, a record label.

Right now, a major track record label makes most of their money off of catalog, and they don't much care about new music unless it's already set out for them.

So if it's successful, they're interested.

If it's not, they'll be.

They don't care.

This is not a good turn of events.

I was right on this, but, sadly so.

of the majors becomes a minor.

I missed on this.

It may still come to pass.

So major labels, it means, of which there are three and a half will say there's, Warner Music Group.

There's, Sony Music, and, there's Universal Music Group, and the half would be, Merlin.

Merlin is an association of all the independent record labels, and they hold a good 20% market share, so they're pretty well up there.

My thought was that what was going to happen was a, private equity company would buy totally, the record label and then just turn it into a catalog and not do any new music, in which case it would become a minor label would be major in terms of income, revenue.

But, in terms of actually having a say in the music business and what's happening would be less so that did not come to pass.

Here's one that did fintech for musicians takes off.

What is fintech?

Financial technology.

What this means is it's much easier for an artist to finance his or her career.

It's easier to get money for a variety of things that used to have to rely on a major label for you can, even if you've had a few hits, it's easier to sell your catalog or to have someone invest in your catalog than it's ever been before.

So this has come to pass are a number of companies that are in this right now.

I don't know if they're giving great deals to artists and, songwriters, but they're there if you need it.

Here's another one I was woefully off on.

Radio makes a comeback.

Every time we say radio is dead, we find out that it isn't.

People still listen to the radio, especially in their car.

Not much so otherwise.

But they do listen in their car.

And let's face it, people do commute.

So radio is still.

I'm not going to say it's vital, but it's still there.

Right now, music, radio, there's nothing innovative.

This happened in the last 15 years or so, and they even take their cues from what's happening on Spotify these days.

So that makes their playlists as well.

So radio did not make a comeback.

Here's a yes and no.

There's a social media revolt, and that is beginning to happen.

There are a lot of people that are leaving social media.

They're finding that it's destructive to their way of life.

Their thought process, their well-being.

So they're glad we live in this is all age groups.

Slowly but surely it is happening.

It didn't happen in 2025.

may see that happen eventually.

And as AI becomes more predominant and bots begin to talk to bots, and bots make comments on a bot post, then you're going to see people lose interest.

We're not far away from that, but it didn't happen in 2025.

Here's another one that I missed on the AI bubble bursts.

So you hear about the AI bubble and what is it?

Well, it's something where there's a lot of investment in AI technology, and especially in 4 or 5 companies, and they're involved in something called circular financing.

So in other words, something like this.

If I pay you $100 to dig a ditch, and then you pay me$100 to fill it in.

There's no actually no revenue involved.

And yet, on both companies balance sheets, they make $100.

And this is what's happening.

It's companies investing in the other and the other and the other.

And it looks like there's a huge investment that's happening in these 4 or 5 companies that really make a big difference in our economy.

I predicted that the bubble would burst in 2025.

It has not yet.

It may in 2026.

It may not.

It will happen eventually.

Here's another one.

While society will finally become standard.

No, that didn't happen, sadly.

got a little closer.

With Spotify finally introducing its lossless.

not really lossless tier.

It's part of their their premier tier.

downside is it's only 44 one kilohertz 2024 bit, where all the other streaming services go to 96 K or even 192.

So if what's a saga really means a lot to you, you probably don't want to get it from Spotify.

And it turns out that, Spotify thought that it would lead to, more people buying the premium tier, and that hasn't happened either.

But, it's far from being standard.

I think it will be eventually.

It didn't happen in 2025.

I predicted the indie artists would dominate the mainstream.

They sort of are.

But major artists from major record labels still reign.

And the reason why is major record labels have all this infrastructure that's built up over decades that is difficult, if not impossible, for an indie artist to replicate.

So as a result, you can be a star on your own, but you cannot be a superstar without the major labels.

We are seeing more and more star artists, though, that are independent, so we're seeing that.

But, they're not dominating like I expected.

Anyway.

Here's one more streaming services delete songs.

What that means is now if a particular song that you uploaded doesn't have a number of streams and sometimes it's 100 times it's 50, some it's thousand.

If they don't, if you don't have that over the course of a year, then they delete the song.

There's a lot of that happening, actually.

And part of it is storage space.

It's just cheaper to do it that way.

The other part of it is, well, if there's not that many people willing to listen to the song, maybe it's not worth being there.

what I predict, though, is going to happen is you're going to find that the streaming platforms are going to say, we're going to delete this.

If you want to keep it on, you have to pay extra.

So I think that will happen.

So let's get to 2026 predictions.

Here's the first one.

Streaming subscription prices go up.

Well they have to.

And the reason why is streaming itself.

The number of subscribers has plateaued.

It's still growing, but by percentages, by single digit percentages rather than double digit like it used to be.

What's happening?

As a result, the only way you can grow your revenue is to raise prices.

And already there are rumors that Spotify, after the first of the year, are going to raise their prices.

I think it's $12 a month now.

I'm going to raise it to 14.

Doesn't seem like a lot, but, over a hundred million people.

It's a lot.

this will happen to most, if not all streaming services.

Well, this isn't much of a prediction because it already happened.

Spotifys subscriber base plateaus.

Yes it did.

We've already seen that.

They've already showed us the numbers.

So we can say a yes to this one.

It'll get worse, though, and I think the thing to look for is, are the streaming numbers actually going to go down?

This one is in the process of happening already.

YouTube becomes a streaming alternative.

Already there are more people that stream it off of YouTube, get their music off of YouTube than anywhere else.

And those numbers continue to grow, especially in the 16 to 24 age bracket.

they're finding that they much more enjoy YouTube than TikTok, for instance.

the ball started rolling last year.

It's going to continue.

Here's another prediction I slop becomes intolerable.

What is AI slop?

Well, that's when a lot of, untalented or marginally talented people use prompts to create content and then upload it to whatever streaming platform, whatever platform you can think of.

Some of it is okay, and most of it is not.

But what it does is it takes up space, and it makes it much harder to find things that you want.

So this is AI slop, and it's getting to the point where it's just too much and people are going to give up and say, I want to go to a platform that does not have this at all.

That is human driven and human driven.

Only.

This one, I predict, will happen.

Major labels see artists leave over sooner.

Audio deals.

What does this mean?

Last year, the major labels well, actually started two years ago.

The major labels instituted lawsuits over copyright infringement to sooner in audio, which are the big AI music generators.

And what happened was they had a really good chance of winning, an excellent chance of winning.

In fact.

But towards the end of the year, the end of 2025, the major labels began to settle with Suno and Audio.

And not only settle, but make deals with them.

The latest one was, Warner Music Group making a deal that went beyond settling the lawsuit and basically said, hey, you know what?

You can use all of the audio for artists to train on.

Plus, you can also use their likenesses.

Now, in all of this, you never see anything about how much money the artist is going to get from this.

This is going to be just like a lot of other things that we see.

It's a one way street.

Major labels make most of the money.

The label the artists get very little as a result.

And I think what you'll find is either artists that will refuse to to sign a deal with a major label and artists that are already on doing everything they can to get off.

It hasn't happened yet, but it will.

As artists understand more how they've been sold out.

our music gets a big push back.

I predict.

the problem with AI music is really good.

It's very competently put together and produced and it's amazing.

And in some cases.

But there's no left turns.

There's no nuances.

There's nothing surprising.

And that's what we like.

That's what humans are really good at.

There's a certain sameness to it all.

I mentioned this where I took the the top six AI artists that were getting a lot of plays and actually had a number one country track.

And I listened to them all and again, well done.

But there is a sameness to all the music.

And we're seeing this already and surprisingly, we're seeing it in 16 to 24 age bracket where they're feeling this first.

They're the ones pushing back first and everybody else will follow.

Now, it's true that 87% of the time, people can't tell a difference between an AI track and a human developed track.

That's true.

But we'll get better at it as we go on, and you'll find that the tracks will have even less variety than they do now.

So this is going to happen in a big way.

I predict.

Human musicians are back in vogue.

Well, this is part of the previous prediction.

There's something about a human musician.

New musicians that are playing together, especially not playing to two tracks or not playing to, loops or samples.

There's a human component that we like, and we have liked it forever.

I predict that what will happen is musicians will go back to basics.

They'll leave mistakes in.

Because that's the one way you can tell.

Is this an AI track or not?

Well, if they're mistakes in it, then yes, it's a human track.

The other thing that they'll do is go back to less produced tracks, because what you find with AI is it tends to overproduce.

So yes, human musicians are going to become a thing.

It may not happen in 2026, but it will start to happen in 2026.

Yeah, I predict this for the last year.

I think it'll happen this year, though.

The AI bubble I described with that was, little bit ago and it's going to burst.

This may not be good for the stock market.

Ultimately, it's going to be better.

Ultimately, you're going to find the some of the big companies that are running things.

AI for instance anthropic.

Microsoft.

It's really in on this.

Nvidia.

I think you'll find that they're coming back to Earth.

There's going to be a sense of reality of what I can actually do and what it can't.

Right now, we're being sold on AI as being the end all be all.

There's so much better to help our lives.

And all of the surveys, test reports say that's not the case.

the AI bubble will burst.

I hate to say this, but a new round of music venues will close.

And the reason why is is just too expensive.

One of the big things that always kept music venues and I'm talking clubs and small auditoriums, the what always kept that going was alcohol sales.

Well, guess what?

Younger generations don't drink as much.

As a result, there's not as much revenue coming in.

As a result, it's much harder for a venue to stay around.

So I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

All these things cycle and it will cycle into where live music, local live music is going to be a thing again, but it's going to get worse before it gets better.

The TikTok sale is never consummated, so as I described before, TikTok was banned.

The other had to leave the United States completely, or it had to sell to us.

Companies.

Again, the Chinese who own the Chinese government owns part of ByteDance.

ByteDance is the official owner.

Chinese?

They've never agreed to selling the algorithm.

That really makes TikTok work.

As a result, it's silly for any company to put money towards this because if they have it without the algorithm or with what they think is, a substitute and it doesn't work, people are going to leave in droves.

So it's going to be a sunk investment.

No time.

I think this never happens.

A sale never happens.

Where artists choose to stay off social media.

This is already happening from the standpoint.

The social media is a lot of work and too much work for some people.

musicians just want to make music.

They just want to create.

don't want to be personalities.

They especially don't want to be on social media.

And yes, there are few that do and thrive on it, but most do not.

And the ones that are on are all complain about it.

Too much work.

So I think you're going to find a number of artists that are going to stop doing this.

Get off of social media.

Look for alternatives.

Can't say what those alternatives are going to be, but I'm sure they're going to pop up and we're going to see it this year.

More music gear manufacturers consolidate.

I predict.

So what's happening is, boutique music manufacturers, even ones that are doing well, have been around for a long time.

They're selling out to bigger corporations, are holding companies primarily because the owners now are getting older and they don't want to work as hard and they want to cash out more than anything.

That's the reason, in some cases, is the fact that business is a lot harder to do than it used to be.

There are fewer music stores, for instance, so it's harder to make a sale.

But we're going to see that more and more boutique music and audio gear companies, are rolled up by bigger manufacturers, by holding companies.

Now.

That being said, another prediction fewer and fewer new audio music products.

Already we're seeing that over the last six months or so, I've seen fewer and fewer press releases about new gear.

There's just less gear out there than there has been.

To some degree, that's better, because a lot of it is just a copy of a copy.

God knows we don't need any more.

1176 really two style plug ins, plenty of those already.

But now there's going to be there are already fewer and fewer new audio products and music products that are coming out.

Again, part of the reason is there's fewer places to sell.

You can try to do it online.

It's hard.

Marketing is a big problem.

There are fewer music stores.

There are fewer audio dealers there, just fewer dealers out there.

It makes it a lot harder to sell product.

So it's already started.

There's fewer audio music products and it's just going to continue.

It's going to get worse.

Hey, I mixing is still not possible.

I predict.

There's a lot of AI mixing solutions out there.

They say they're mixing solutions and so far they don't deliver.

Some of them come and go, they come and they make big predictions, and then they disappear when they can't fulfill them.

Mixing is one of the hardest things that can happen.

And it's so up to the engineers, to the mixers.

Taste.

Now it's true the AI can balance things up, but once you go beyond that, it's very difficult.

What kind of effects to use and when, when and where should you usually mute tracks, for instance.

There's just a lot of decisions that I cannot make right now.

So we're not going to see a new AI mixing solution happen in 2026.

We may see it down the road.

We're not going to see it soon.

AI predictive hashtags will fade away as algorithms take over, and we're seeing this already.

Hashtags used to be the big thing.

They were keywords.

Basically.

But they're less and less useful.

As a matter of fact, we're finding on Instagram the CEO of Instagram recently said, don't bother because our algorithms are so good.

We can tell what the keywords are.

We can tell what your intended audience is.

So hashtags, if you're using them, you can continue, but they're probably not necessary.

The name and the shows gets smaller.

I predict.

Nam is the National Association of Music Merchants.

There's usually two conferences, two exhibitions a year, one in January in Anaheim.

Another one was kind of different places.

That happens in summer, Nashville most recently.

And then, yeah.

Software Engineering Society exhibition, used to happen once a year.

Was the biggest one.

And then it'll be smaller ones, other places.

And the one that would happen is roving.

It's always in a different place.

But these exhibitions have been smaller and smaller and smaller every year.

They're going to continue to get smaller as exhibitors or potential exhibitors, manufacturers, software developers decide it's no longer worth the cost.

There was a good reason for these exhibitions.

Once upon a time, what you wanted to do is meet your dealers face to face.

Then what you can do is you could do deals with them.

If you had problems, you can hash it out face to face.

Well guess what?

There are fewer dealers, so that doesn't matter.

And also know we know about new products and manufacturers used to wait until these exhibitions would happen to introduce a new product so you wouldn't hear about it.

And all of a sudden you'd see it.

Well, now, as soon as it's ready, there's a press release.

It's all over it.

We all know about it, There's less of a need for this to happen.

I like these shows because there's lots of friends that I have in the industry.

I don't see any other time, but there's less and less of a reason for them to happen.

And we're going to see fewer and fewer exhibitors, which means that the shows will become smaller.

I predict another major recording studio bites the dust.

We've been seeing commercial recording studios fall by the wayside every year.

lots of reasons, real estate prices are higher.

It's very tempting, even if you own the real estate to sell for a big chunk of dough.

Rates for recording studios, especially large ones, really haven't changed in 20 years.

What I used to pay, you know, 20 years ago, is what?

Pretty much what you pay now.

And there's less work because everybody has their own studio.

Major artists own their own major studios.

They just use for themselves.

So as a result, with less work, not being able to charge what they need to charge or expenses going up, we're going to see at least one major recording studio go away this year, and maybe several.

I predict an I music designer will be nominated for a Grammy.

This is a sad state of affairs.

I music designer is a designation of someone that uses prompts to get a high to generate music.

This is a brand new designation, but in fact, what we're going to see is, not only being embraced, especially by major labels, is that, they're actually going to push them for Grammy nominations.

Now, again, there are limitations.

The Grammys will not, allow nominations.

It's 100%, AI generated.

But just like copyright, if there's a certain percentage, it's human.

Then it's also eligible for a Grammy.

I think we'll unfortunately see someone in this category nominated.

The Da project gained slow traction.

I talked about the Da project in, my 2025 review and what this is, is a, file exchange format that allows you to, change between different doors.

So if you start a session on Ableton, you can move to logic and all of your plugins, all of your timings, all of your notes, everything, all the metadata will all be transferred in one file.

And you can go from door to door to door.

There's only four companies that are involved in this.

I think we'll see more.

And I think we'll see this, gain little traction at the upcoming January NAB show.

And that's it.

So have a very happy 2026.

Fingers crossed that my good predictions will come true.

And my negative ones will not.

However it happens, you'll see me back here this time next year and we'll find out what actually came to pass and what didn't.

Have a Happy New Year.

Thanks for listening and being my inner circle.

Remember, if you have any questions or comments, you can send them to questions at Bobby or Sense Wkyc.com.

You can also learn all about the latest in music, audio and production news, and find out about openings from our latest online classes at Bobby or since wkyc.com.

This is Bobby Oshinsky.

I will see you next time.