When ios 5 is released will you have to have lion to sync your device with computer or will snow leopard 10.6.8 work? Also when it comes out, if I update will it take off my music so I have to put it back on or will everything stay on?
I doubt you will have to have Lion.
You will deal with your music the way you have always dealt with full os updates, install the os and sync back all your data. So make sure all you music is on your computer for the initial 5.0 update. After that you won't need to do the full install for subsequent 5.X.X updates.