ghost of miles Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 Quincy Jones in 1984 predicting the future of popular-culture distribution (from a Radio & Records Magazine interview, cited in Michaelangelo Matos' new book Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year): JONES: With computers around now, it would be very easy to get musical profiles of people's likes and dislikes... Maybe using TV to make impulse buying more accessible to more people... the screen lists whatever you're listening to... You say "I like that" and look at the information on the screen. Then you hit one or two buttons that ask for your purchase selection and credit card number... something in that direction. R & R: That would be a great way to chart sales electronically. JONES: Right. And it could be possible in five years for you to have no inventory in your house. No records, tapes, anything. If you had access to a satellite, a code book/catalog, and a television set, you could punch up anything you wanted anytime... And you could really target the music because you don't always want to hear a whole album. So you're programming several hours of music from this vast catalog in the sky. That would be incredible. You'd have access to anything out there that's current and have an intelligent way to catalog it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HutchFan Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 Very interesting. Quincy is an astute man. I wonder if he foresaw the devastating effect these changes would have on the music industry? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 The December 1993 issue of Musician Magazine sure did...but even they were still thinking in terms of who was going to do the selling, not would there be any selling at all... https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MUSICIAN-Magazine-Dec-1993-Future-Shocks-The-Band-Music-Industry-History/303855437113?hash=item46bf320539:g:6J0AAOSwGrhf66zs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub Modal Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 Very cool find. If only downloading/streaming was more viable for artists and there wasn't so much metadata extracted from it for profiling the listener and selling them ads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjzee Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 And then what if your music starts disappearing from the cloud because of cancel culture... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted March 5, 2021 Report Share Posted March 5, 2021 (edited) On 3/3/2021 at 3:38 PM, mjzee said: And then what if your music starts disappearing from the cloud because of cancel culture... Exactly right. I remember when Amazon deleted its customers' eBooks of 1984 (for copyright reasons). Or just plain going out of print. Fantasy was proud of keeping their CDs in print. They bragged that they had more Contemporary albums in print than had ever occurred when Contemporary was a going concern. This hit home to me in 1997, when I was shocked to learn that Ian Fleming's James Bond books were out of print and unavailable in the US. Edited March 5, 2021 by GA Russell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.