As of yesterday’s Apple announcements, the newest breed of iPods — called the iPod touch — include a multitouch interface, a WiFi connection, widescreen video display, and the Safari browser. But are the new iPods pointing to the future of portable media players, or merely holding on to an old-style music system that is about to undergo another radical change?

According to an interview in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, legendary music producer Rick Rubin seems convinced that the iPod and its iTunes music store are yesterday’s news. Rubin, who is currently the co-head of Columbia Records, as well as being the producer behind hits from the Beastie Boys, Slayer, Johnny Cash, Run DMC, and Jay-Z now has the mission of saving the music industry. And, to him, the iPod is by.

An Industry in Disarray

Rubin is proposing radical measures, as the Times story pointed out, considering the music industry is in disarray. CD sales

have fallen by 30 percent from a year ago, illegal file-swapping is still prevalent, and the supreme promotional engines like radio and MTV aren’t what they used to be.

The reply, Rubin and some others say, is a subscription, cable-like model. “You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you like,” Rubin told the Times. He foresees a virtual, online library that would always be accessible from online connections in a car, a cellphone, a desktop, a portable computer, or a TV.

“The iPod,” Rubin added, “will be out of date, but there would be a Walkman-like device that you could plug into your speakers at domestic.” Presumably, that “Walkman-like device” would be a Net-connected listening and control device without storage. While Rubin targeted his doom and gloom forecast toward the iPod specifically, it seems to apply just the same to all portable music players that…

Original post by Arik Hesseldahl