My breakfast club asked about the future of music; my take.
In twenty years...
We'll be listening through...
- Wireless ear buds for the poor.
- Literal ear buds for the middle class (in the ubiquitous Lasik era).
- Bass-range full-body mods for immersive world players.
Everything touchable/viewable has the option of a sonic identity as printable electronics become free/cheap. This means all goods have theme songs, animation, and spoken (Chinglish?) instructions built in; and we're talking about products, not even their packaging. Early cacophony in retail (all those products talking, singing, emoting) leads to more polite sound triggers and real-time, inter-product/brand negotiation for which gets to play what when and for whom.
Lastfm will offer a service to hotels and casinos. RFID your room key cards (passports?) and we'll program the music in W's lounges, hallways, elevators, bars and lobbies. personal music prefs blended with the ever changing mix of people in each space. You're bringing your ambience with you when you enter a room; it lingers for only a short while after you leave.
Live performance regains currency, for its freshness and authenticity. Those 4-hour-workweek folks source a Lincoln, NB, string quartet for their dinner in Shanghai.
Despite Google buying out AT&T, latency remains a challenge for musicians when they play, if not when they distribute their music.
Lastfm is still around, of course, because they exploited unsold/archaic ad banner inventory to sell instant access to live music performances. Combining personal/social music profiles with realtime ad targeting let them make irresistible offers. One click on a widget and you're listening/seeing/playing-with that Nicaraguan garage band you read about.
It may be retro in 20 years (after 15 years on the market), but people still use a TV scoring/fx bot for their personal video channels, sometimes even for their voice chats. With a few cues and clues, it cleverly drops in dramatic theme music, transitions, emergency room sound effects, laughtracks, and other audio. First used to spice up decades of old audio books, the company got rich by revitalizing ancient YouTube backlists.
Google will be how you find music, as rich media, especially those with words inside, become searchable. So you'll whip out your phone, hit the Goog button, speak "most embarrassing song ever" and see a young pre-lipo Britney Spears on the 2007 MTV Video Awards.
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