Lack of imagination about new revenue streams by aging musicians is hardly going to result in a lack of creative content. Look at how much more diversity and creativity there is on the music scene now than 30 years ago, this is largely due to the democratizing effect the internet can have on such industries.

I think there is an interesting parallel with comic strips (think funny pages, not spiderman). Pre-internet, you made a comic strip and then sold it, selling to just one person or newspaper was not profitable so you would sell it to an organization that could distribute it for you, a syndicate. The rise of the internet brought us some of the first web-comics, syndicated by the internet. But how do you make money off of that? Well, they had to do a lot of trial and error, but there are now a growing number of people capable of maintaining a living (and doing it better than traditional syndication ever did) and they are doing it in a gigantic diversity of ways, not just by creating product X (the comic strip itself) and selling it.

Music still feels like it's stuck in the pre-internet era. Musicians create a 2-3 minute song and try and sell it. That seems like a really inflexible model, there is no technical reason music needs to be packaged this way and I'm guessing that the people capable of finding a new way to package their talents could start a revolution.

I don't have answers, but all this fatalism about how music is dying is silly and short-sighted.