Months of plate-shifting hype made for a volcanic debut for Apple’s iPad yesterday.

As Steve Jobs descended from Mt. Cupertino, a mock-turtleneck clad Prometheus, bringing new digital fire to mankind, every tech blogger from here to Sparta felt compelled to weigh in on the supposedly revolutionary tablet computer doohickey. And I suppose, as this post proves, I am no different.

But as I’m tempest-toss’d upon this sea of speculation, I can’t help but wonder what the iPad will (or won’t) do for the music industry.

After some thought and a pot or two of coffee, I’m come to the following conclusion:

The iPad (or devices like it) is a boon for DIY musicians.

That’s not because of any new technology that comes on the device. As MusicWeek points out, Jobs’ presentation was largely devoid of digital-music talk.

The iPad will come with iTunes, the App Store, and whatever apps, such as Pandora or Last.fm, people use to consume music on their iPhones/iPods/etc.

Maybe Apple isn’t talking about music right now, but regardless, the change in size and format of the medium could make a huge impact on how people consume music.

Think about the change in physical music from LP to cassette to CD. See a pattern here? Computer … iPhone … iPad … anyone?

The iPad is clearly a better medium for the visual side of music — artwork, video, liner notes — and that’s really important. And with user-generated content sites like YouTube and Ustream, it’s going to be that much easier to get your music into people’s hands and before their eyes.

Also, for musicians on the go, managing one’s own content on a tiny mobile device requires some serious iPod-chi. I’m not sure how easy it is to store and access shared files (MP3s, PDFs, etc) on an iPad, but I’m assuming its laptop-mobile hybrid status makes it a little easier. Maybe not.

Best of all though is that the price is right. For musicians on a budget (i.e., most), the iPad could fill a serious need: cheap connectivity.

For planning a tour, this is huge. Unless you’ve got a manager, publicist and label doing all the networking, communicating and planning for you, it’s up to you to use some combination of your wits, the phone in your pocket and whatever Internet access you can hijack to make your way across the country without hemorrhaging cash and/or success.

The iPad ranges in price from $500 for 16G of storage, to $700 for 64G. Add $130 to the price tag plus $30 a month if you want to go 3G and not have to worry about finding reliable wi-fi hotspots everywhere you go.

For many indie musicians, laptops just aren’t in the budget. It’s expensive enough to pay the smartphone bill on top of the cost of gas, equipment, food, beer, unexpected medical expenses and so on.

In summary, for musicians looking to make it in the industry, devices like the iPad could mean cheaper, more effective ways of spreading content and managing business.

Thanks, Prometheus.