its still within the first week so hopefully this is not too late yet. as a complement to our 2k18 end of year thread, post ur musings and ideas on the future of music within the next 12 months or so, whether it be about dance music (“edm” or “underground”), indie rock, fm radio pop, or ur limited press field recording cassette single series. whatever genres or scenes exists as well as those yet to exist. thought this would be good for helping others catch up on whats goin on, know what to look back on, and laugh at us this time next year if we happen to be completely wrong 
predictions on music and its culture(s) in 2019
weirdoslam
#1
Music Predictions 2020 and Beyond
bths80
#3
James Blake will release his new album full of sad chords and sunken vocals and i will wish it were more dance orientated
HTRK will finally release a new album and i’ll cum everywhere
Hopefully new FKA twigs (w/ OPN?)
Beatrice Dillon surprises us with an album
Lee Gamble releases his 3 announced LP’s and i listen to them while dancing even if all of the tunes aren’t danceworthy
RA closes its comments section so the reviewers can feel safe to dish out more 3.3s to good music
Lady Gaga falls off her mech thing
kid_kozmoe
#4
isn’t there some Warp Records birthday this year? so they’ll occupy a lot of media attention.
nickecks
#5
trance inspired will be to 2019 what electro inspired was to 2018
breaks will get old and tired, ultimately to be replaced by something recycled from 98-2002
white people will continue to hype gqom loops and korean-speaking vocalists over house tracks ad nauseum
acid will get old and tired to be replaced by more psychedelic psytrance influenced sounds
liquid DNB will make a comeback
techno will get worse before it gets better
Overmono will REIGN SUPREME over EVERYONE and influence lots of producers
max-renn
#6
People will abandon EBM because it’s “too white and male”
All the self-proclaimed EBM producers will migrate back to either tunnel techno or industrial techno
L.I.E.S. will continue to release solid material but people will care less about them in general
Some big name house producers will get #metoo’ed
People will start making ‘deconstructed trance’ ala lorenzo senni, thereby driving the prices of JP-8080’s up 300%
People will keep making shitty 90’s throwback house tunes with Korg M1 presets
DJ Tool drum tracks with the worst drum machine sounds will be the rage. Casio Rapman and Alesis SR-16 sounds will suddenly be “in”
max-renn
#10
Tunnel techno is just some bullshit term I use for the really propulsive, minimal sort of techno, also commonly used synonyms would be “greyscale techno” or “techno for dudes in plain black tshirts”. Think CLR podcasts, Northern Electronics, Avian, SHXCXCHCXSH etc. and you get the general idea. When I listen to it, it makes me feel like I’m driving through a long lit tunnel for hours on end.
As far as deconstructed trance goes, I would say Lorenzo Senni is the forefront of that as he seems to be making the most of it at the moment, but I am reminded of TCF (lars holdhus) and Maxwell Sterling as artists who spring to mind, although Teki Latex was on the idea back in 2014 but nothing had really gelled at that point.
Now that Lorenzo Senni is getting his shine and earning some crossover appeal (his music was in the recent Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror for instance,) you’re going to see people spring up who take certain trance tropes and place them outside the framework of the genre. Whether that’s emotional arpeggiated buildups being juxtaposed with nontraditional instrumentation, or densely layered supersaw workouts, or just plain fusions of similar/disparate genres, I don’t know, but I see people hopping on this train and taking it off the rails in 6-8 months. If my prediction is correct, I will leave this forum forever.
Yung_Dave
#11
this tweet really summarized rap music in general for 2018. I’ve never really been a huge fan of rap tbh - always been a bigger fan of UK based club stuff and rap / grime (wasn’t really into UK drill in the first place lol, always been an instrumental guy). However, for the past years, I started to pay attention more to US based rap, which definitely kicked off back in 2016 with the XXL Freshmen list, cause everyone was talking about that. Lil Uzi, Kodak (
), 21 Savage were names I really repped. Frankly, the only reason I started listening to them was cause Silk Road Assassins were placing their tracks in their mixes for Radar Radio, placing contemporary rap tracks alongside fresh club music, which offered a really interesting perspective on it.
Nowadays I stan Brockhampton 
and have done since seeing them live last November. I wasn’t a fan of them when they released the Saturation trilogy, but besides being three really great albums, it was a meta-commentary on the state of the music industry about everything being “oversaturated”, not like that’s deep anyways. Sure, rappers take time to release, but there’s so much shit circulating out and about that attention spans for releases have significantly decreased. Streaming isn’t helping either. In fact, a couple days after that tweet from LuckyMe, Travis Scott released Astroworld and so many people on socials were going crazy about it. Difference was, the attention life expectancy was a bit longer that usual. Plus, Sicko Mode is a meme now 
this entire thread is worth a read imo.
criminiminal
#13
add the meaningless prefix “ambient” to all your predictions and watch the dilettantes flock.
kieranpr
#14
playboi carti is going to drop his new album and it will be glorious, ushering in a wave of mainstream psychedelia
str_apx
#15
Grime’s the only new thing I’ve rly been paying attention to so this will be quite narrow, and I’m on the outside of grime anyway so might not be v accurate. Most of this is based on observing chat on twitter.
I think it’s doing quite well as an underground genre atm but seems to have basically given up on mainstream acceptance. I think the afrobeats success in the charts (and the AJ Tracey “don’t call me grime” turn after being a prominent potential chart contender) and the competition at underground road level from UK Hip Hop and drill has shaken confidence a bit.
Sharky Major seems to have become the main London promoter over a couple of years. Haven’t been to any of the events (Grime Originals and various spinoff promotions) but they look sick.
Keep Hush also making big promotion moves with a slightly broader focus, and they stream the events.
Healthiest looking MC scenes (in terms of level of visibility, not heard enough to comment on quality): London, Midlands generally esp Notts and Birmingham, Manchester.
Healthiest looking beat scenes (same provisos as above):
London, Scotland generally, Bristol, Midlands.
Big stations and shows:
Since Radar unceremoniously died Mode is the big one. Pyro also looking good. The Rinse show cycling through a 4 DJ lineup every week seems to have given the show a fresh feel and the clips online are always great. Spyro on 1extra will be a great advert for the scene to a wider audience.
Things I reckon will become more visible:
- RnG / cuts style grime.
- Grime above 140. Maybe some kind of influence from footwork.
- Women MCs DJs and producers consolidating on the limited progress already made to take more of their rightful place in the scene.
- increasing influence of live events. Hopefully easier to do without police interference now.
- Manga St Hilaire’s two big and successful projects influencing ppl to be more ambitious in terms of projects and the kinds of things they can talk about.
Things to look out for:
- Sharky Major events or any independent local events.
- K9’s Mad In The Cut 2 (look up the first one if you’ve not heard it - super aggro but frequently vulnerable & moving album centred around grief for his murdered best friend)
- Teddy / Silencer ft Red Boy G if it ever comes out.
- I’m hoping Faultsz will put out another mixtape or album but if not he’s active on radio and London raves & is releasing singles pretty regularly.
- YGG - PK on SLSA and Lyrical Strally on Pearly Whites have provided my 2 favourite MC tracks of the year.
- Best releases I’ve heard are mostly available on bandcamp and I expect that to continue.
- if you like MCs clashing then looks like there’ll be a new Lord Of The Mics coming soonish with lots of new gen MCs.
str_apx
#16
Oh and since it’s no good me bigging up women in the scene and then not naming any, here are a v few ppl there seems to be excitement about, although again I can’t comment personally in most cases as I’ve only rly been watching from a distance:
- L U C Y on production and DJing (this one I can comment personally on - she is sick)
- AG on DJing - she’s one of the Rinse DJs and is highly hyped by ppl whose opinion is reliable.
- not sure how grime-exclusive they are but Sicaria Sound (DJs) have been getting a lot of hype and playing big platforms in the scene or on grime lineups
- DJ BPM has a v underground focused show on Resonance FM.
- lots of MCs coming through but as I’m generally more interested in beats and DJs than MCs I don’t really search for them so not listened to many and I’m shit with names so I can’t remember any of them. FFSwhythough? getting a lot of plaudits. Nolay is one of my favourites from the earlier days of grime and she’s still putting stuff out. Lady Fury has been on mic at events I think and I would love to see her release stuff as her bit on the Conflict DVD is one of my favourite ever bits of radio MCing. There are tons of MCs coming through though. Sharky Major has a Girls Of Grime event which I think is exclusively women performers.
As with post above I’m a total outsider to the scene coming from a middle class white suburban perspective so this is VERY partial. And there’s a lot of activity so I’m only showing a tiny amount.
sanpo
#17
Nice to hear K9 is dropping some more stuff. And yeah SLSA and Antagonist have got me hungry for more grandmixxer and mez collabs.
str_apx
#18
Yh K9 seems to be getting fully active - on twitter today looks like he’s in Teddy’s studio. Teddy got a bit of stick online for praising K9s verse on a Logan Sama set and not knowing who he was - I think this kind of “Death to False Metal” attitude might be one of the things that throws a spanner in the works in grime if it leads to an insular, fan-service scene. There’s almost no way to keep it interesting if that becomes the dominant attitude.
Love Antagonist, going to be putting a mix with it in up in the next month or so.
Spednar
#20
techno twitter royalty will become increasingly wack.
people will realize noise techno is more fun, some people in fringe scenes will get some temporary hype