2009 saw some solid progress made in various digital content marketplaces but it is too early to start talking about the green shoots of media recovery.  The Media Meltdown (the process by which media industries are disrupted and reshaped by digitization of content) will continue to claim scalps throughout 2010 as digital content revenues do little to offset the impact of plummeting physical media sales and as analogue dollars crumble into digital cents.  But consumers are not falling out of love with media, rather they are growing tired of paying for its 20th-century product iterations (and those 21^st century products that try to reinvent the old products in a digital context).  A new framework for media product innovation is now required to align media industry content assets with 21st-century consumer behavior and demand.  Forrester proposes what form this should take in a new report ‘Media Product Innovation: Building Products That Thrive In The Media Meltdown’.

The core asset that media companies own is of course the content itself, but Content is no longer king. Or, at least, its throne is no longer undisputed. Instead, content is busy fighting off the republican advances of the channel. ISPs and mobile operators use content to fill their pipes, technology companies to fill their devices, and brands to help sell their products and to meet their branding objectives. The hierarchy is clear.

Lots happened in 2009 but it wasn’t a vintage year for digital music (in fact it was the year it well and truly lost the digital buzz to eReaders). All in all I’d give 2009 a 6 out of 10, with the launch of Spotify accounting for at least couple of those points and the following as the 5 key disappointments:

1. Comes With Music under-whelmed (as did Play Now plus)
2. ISP services didn’t get off the ground (including unlimited MP3’s nearly but not quite moment)
3. Apple’s new killer music format was….oh iTunes albums
4. imeem gave a master class in how not to make money out of social music
5. The big boys (MySpace, Apple) snapped up the innovative competition (Lala, iLike, imeem)

So will be 2010 be any different?  Though I don’t think it will be the year digital music will really come of age (that’s at least a couple more years away) I do expect it on balance to be a stronger one than its predecessor.  Leaving aside the few specific developments I’m not able to talk about here are a few of my predictions:

Information on teens' behavior, as we saw from the coverage of Morgan Stanley’s efforts to map the zeitgeist earlier this year via the musings of a 15-year-old intern, is in great demand.  It’s not only useful to baffled parents, it’s also crucial for content providers, advertisers and marketers seeking to engage with teen audiences.

Based on a European wide survey of nearly 1,400 internet users aged 12-17 across seven major territories (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and Sweden), we captured a number of key consumer trends that help us identify the challenges and opportunities ahead, including the following:

TV is still the main media channel for teens. Reports of TV’s death have been greatly exaggerated. European teens still spend more time watching TV (10.3 hours per week on average) than they do using the internet for personal purposes (9.1 hours). But gaming – 11.7 hours per week if you combine time spent playing games on a PC and on a console – now consumes even more time than TV for European teens.

Social interaction online is an integral part of media consumption. European teens have embraced social media heartily – not only Facebook, which 44% visit at least weekly, but blogs, which 30% read at least weekly. And teens are twice as likely to comment on someone else’s blog as users aged 18+. For teens, the separation between ‘content’ and ‘social media’ is an increasingly irrelevant one – the latter is integrated into the former as part of a wider content experience online.