Bill Gates has said that prognosticators often overestimate the amount of technological change that will happen in a year, but underestimate the changes that will take place over a decade. With the Zeroes coming to an end this week, and Steve Guttenberg's recent column questioning the viability of recorded music in 2020 as inspiration, here's my pick of 10 trends in music and technology that will shape the next decade.
Will the original iPod become an object of fetishization in 2020, like vinyl records are today?
(Credit: Apple Computer, via Wikimedia Commons)
Songs instead of albums
Musicians will always find ways to record their music--it's a fundamental drive, like painting for a painter or writing for a writer. But I agree with Guttenberg that fewer musicians will release suites of songs organized around a common theme or sound. As much as I love my long-playing records, they arose out of economics rather than art--they were a convenient way for companies to bundle multiple songs (particularly songs that might not have sold as singles) in an affordable package. With digital files already taking the place of physical recordings, there's almost no economic reason for the album to persist. By 2020, the concept of the album will be an anachronism with a few vocal adherents--like vinyl records are today--but most music will be released and consumed as songs.
Streams instead of downloads
Where did we get the idea that digital music has to be downloaded? It started with the CD and file-trading networks--content owners wouldn't sell us music in a form that could be consumed on our computers, so we ripped our own and swapped the files through Napster and its brethren. But now, every time a new song or album comes out, or we rediscover an old act, we have to rip or download the recordings, then transfer them to whichever device(s) we want to play them on. There's got to be an easier way!
If you had access to every song ever recorded, on any device, from any location with an Internet connection, wouldn't you rather pay for that service than buy a new CD or two every month? People say they want to own music, but when it's just a digital file, what do they want to own--a collection of ones and zeroes sitting on a segment of their hard drive? Why bother?
I think the real problem is that today's streaming services don't give you every song ever recorded and don't work on every device, and broadband data access--particularly wireless--is not ubiquitous. Those flaws stem from business problems (licensing, DRM, format incompatibility, and insufficient broadband infrastructure) rather than technology problems. And the business problems are gradually being resolved--look at the introduction of Rhapsody and Spotify for iPhone, and Apple's acquisition of streaming music service (and music locker) Lala. By 2020, most professionally recorded music will be consumed as on-demand streams and people won't pay by the track.
In the cloud rather than on hard drives
Some songs will never be available on demand--think of tracks from friends or obscure independent acts, or live covers (where licensing can be incredibly complicated, involving multiple performers and songwriters). But as users become accustomed to listening to more professionally recorded music on demand, they'll expect their personal collections to be available in the cloud as well. After all, who wants to spend time backing up a 120GB music collection on an external drive, or choosing particular recordings to eliminate in order to clear space on a cell phone?
This is where Apple's Lala acquisition really makes sense--imagine if iTunes served not only as an on-demand music service but also as a locker for songs you'd previously downloaded, ripped, or obtained elsewhere. Suddenly, the 16GB of storage on an entry-level iPhone would seem generous instead of paltry.
Fidelity rather than file size
Once our music lives in the cloud, we'll no longer have to worry about running out of space on our local drives or devices. Microsoft's SkyDrive already offers 25GB of online storage for free, and I could easily see that increasing one-hundred-fold by 2020. That's right: free terabytes of storage. It'll take a little bit longer, but eventually bandwidth--even wireless bandwidth--will increase to the point where streaming lossless digital files makes sense. Listeners will rediscover what they've been missing--detail in the midrange, and tons of information at the low and high ends of the spectrum--and the era of the MP3 will be looked back (and down) upon as the dark ages of audio quality.
Extras become standard
Again, with concerns over storage gradually disappearing, what's to prevent artists from packaging their music with artwork, lyric sheets, video outtakes, and even interactive applications? Today's artist-specific iPhone apps will become standard. Casual fans will stream a couple songs for free. Hardcore fans will pay to download the entire app and pore over it obsessively.
Production rather than consumption
Digital technology has already democratized the recording process--what used to take tens of thousands of dollars and a professional studio can now be accomplished with a laptop and a free program like Garage Band or Audacity. The results usually don't sound as good, but the experimentation process is fun, and sometimes a gem emerges. Digital technology and the Internet have also made promotion and distribution far easier than they were a decade ago. By 2020, music fans will spend almost as much time creating and sharing recordings with their friends as they do listening to professionally recorded music. Don't believe me? Think of this: 10 years ago, writers were a comparatively rare breed. Now, everybody's got a blog, or at least a Facebook page. In another 10 years, everybody will be a musician--or at least a recording artist.
Suggestions rather than searches
In a world of on-demand music in the cloud, search will become vitally important. Users will want to be able to find songs not only by title, album, or artist, but also by a few snippets of lyrics, or even by humming or playing part of a melody. (Imagine a combination of the voice search function available on Google Mobile with an advanced version of technology like Shazam, which can identify recorded music from a few snippets.) But search is only part of the question--once everything's available, how will users decide what to listen to? By 2020, personalized recommendation services, like those provided by Pandora, Slacker, and MOG, will become even more important than search, and will have to be integrated into any on-demand music service that hopes to survive.
Festivals rather than big concerts
Live music is already a long-tail world--with the exception of old, established acts and the very occasional pop sensation, very few bands can fill large arenas or football stadiums. This trend will accelerate as the last bands from the golden age of radio retire, labels take even fewer big promotional risks, and the market continues to fragment under the explosion in recording releases. In 2020, no single act will be able to sell 50,000 tickets at Qwest Field like U2 hopes to do this summer. Instead, the only shows that will pack large arenas will be festivals, where listeners can pick and choose among dozens of acts and classes of entertainment--just like they'll be doing online.
Spectacle rather than personality
With recording revenue plunging, bands must draw fans to their live shows in order to make a living. The common wisdom today dictates that musicians need a personal connection with their fans. They must blog, tweet, maintain their MySpace and Facebook profiles, and generally act like your next door neighbor who's always pestering you to see his band. There's a word for receiving "personal" messages from your favorite 100 bands--it's called "spam." Eventually, this cloud of self-promotional noise will dissipate, and will be replaced by old-fashioned word of mouth. Only acts that put on a great show--not just singing and playing songs, but entertaining in the old-fashioned sense of the word, with video and stagecraft and humor and spectacle--will cut through the noise. Bonus points for the first act that somehow integrates an audience-accessible game console into their act.
Retro takes on a new meaning
In 2020, the original iPod will be almost 20 years old. As the music world is overtaken by a nearly infinite selection of high-fidelity music, streamed over super-fast wireless connections to increasingly inexpensive portable devices, hardcore nostalgists will drag out their first-generation iPods and fill them with treble-heavy 120kbps MP3s. Meanwhile, grandpa will still be down in the basement with his collection of LP records and his lava lamp.
Online music provider 7digital is bringing over-the-air music downloads to recent BlackBerry phones, such as the Storm, Bold, and Tour. The rumors have been circulating for several months now. On Tuesday the company is set to launch its application--developed by DevelopIQ--on the BlackBerry App World store, as well as on the 7digital Web site.
After installing the free app, BlackBerry users will be able to buy and download more than 6 million songs from all four major labels and all the big independents, all in unprotected MP3 format. The app adapts automatically to the speed of the user's connection--when connecting over a wireless data network, it will download a relatively low-quality version of the song. Then, when the user enters the range of a previously known Wi-Fi network, it will automatically--in the background--update the MP3 with a higher-quality version (320kbps in most cases).
7digital is based in the U.K. and is fairly well known in Europe--it powers the download store for free streaming service Spotify, among other partnerships--but has been relatively obscure in the United States. That's changing Tuesday as well: the company is launching its online music store in the U.S., bringing more competition to the likes of iTunes and Amazon. Standard pricing for songs and albums will be 77 cents and $7.77 respectively, which is a play on the company's name (although variable pricing means that some popular material will cost more). The company also offers a free digital locker service, which backs up all your downloads in case you lose them.
Online radio service Last.fm has always seemed to occupy an awkward middle ground between on-demand streaming music services that let you pick and play any song--like free services Imeem and Grooveshark, and Rhapsody, which charges for its service--and the radio-to-your-taste service pioneered by Pandora. (Disclaimer: Last.fm is owned by CBS, which is the parent company of CNET News.)
In my opinion, this is partly because of some flaws with the service itself. The radio service has a lot of powerful features for serious music fans who are willing to do a little work, as CNET's Donald Bell recently explained, but it doesn't work very well as an on-demand service. How do you add songs to a now-playing queue? Why hasn't Last.fm secured on-demand rights for huge artists like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin?
But there's also a bit of a branding gap. Compared with the organic buzz I hear about Pandora and Rhapsody, for instance, Last.fm hardly comes up. Now it looks like CBS is trying to address that issue. In an effort to increase brand awareness, CBS Radio will devote four broadcast HD Radio stations to Last.fm. The playlist will be drawn from listeners' favorites--Last.fm does such a fantastic job of tracking usage, I've referred to it for non-scientific measurements of artist popularity--as well as live performances in Last.fm's New York studio. The stations will make the cutover on October 5, and include KITS-FM (105.3 HD3) in San Francisco, WWFS-FM (102.7 HD2) in New York, KCBS-FM (93.1 HD2) in Los Angeles, and WXRT-FM (93.1 HD3) in Chicago. All four stations will play the same playlist.
HD Radio itself is still in a niche phase. Although it's available in more than 90 percent of major U.S. markets, the receivers are still fairly rare. That might change tomorrow with the launch of the Zune HD, the first MP3 player with a built-in HD Radio receiver. If nothing else, it shows that HD Radio technology is getting small enough and cheap enough to begin building it into a variety of consumer electronics devices--imagine when it starts becoming a feature in smartphones, for instance.
SanDisk's new Sansa Clip+ sounds like a solid choice for an inexpensive MP3 player, but I'm more interested in how it could boost SanDisk's slotMusic and slotRadio--two types of microSD cards preloaded with music.
When first announced last year, slotMusic seemed like a misfire: I couldn't imagine why consumers would pay almost the same price as a CD for a microSD card loaded with lower-quality files. The release of the $19.99 slotMusic player changed my opinion a little bit, but it still seemed too limiting: the only way to get music onto the device through microSD cards. I had the same problem with the slotRadio player, which came out earlier this year--yes, it comes with 1,000 songs for only $99, and you can add additional blocks of 1,000 songs for $39.99, which is great if you're not too picky about your music. But I am.
The Clip+ doesn't force any such choices. For your control-freak moments, you can sideload MP3s (and nearly every other type of music file except, inexplicably, AAC) from your computer, or attach a microSD card of your own making. Or, if you just want to add a bunch of new music without fiddling around with ripped CDs, downloads, and USB cables, you can use slotMusic albums or slotRadio bundles. Add the other features--voice recording, FM radio, and support for Rhapsody--and this seems like an amazing deal for a very flexible portable music player.
As predicted, Apple decided it didn't want a competitor piggybacking off its software, and the latest update to iTunes prevents Apple's iconic media-management app from recognizing the Palm Pre.
It ain't pretty, but it works: the Zune software automatically indexes songs in your iTunes library.
Pre customers have a couple of workarounds--DoubleTwist, a free app that will sync media from your Mac or PC to almost any device, sounds particularly promising. (Bonus: it was created by DVD Jon, who's been tweaking digital-media control schemes since before the iPod was born.)
But that doesn't help Palm, who recognizes that having a strong digital media story is key to competing in the consumer smartphone space. Here's my suggestion: instead of being drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with Apple, Palm should build (or acquire) its own digital media sync software, and make sure it indexes every file in the user's iTunes library. This is what Microsoft did with the Zune software (PC-only, of course, this being Microsoft), and while it's not a perfectly elegant solution--it doesn't carry playlists over, for example--it solves the problem of getting your tunes out of iTunes and onto the device of your choice.
Follow Matt on Twitter
iPhone applications featuring particular musicians have been around for a while now--Nine Inch Nails was recently in the news when Apple rejected an update to its application, and tech companies like Melodeo and The Orchard have experimented with creating iPhone apps for their clients.
In the teaser video for the new U2 BlackBerry app, this map of a concert venue appears immediately after the text "Experience the tour from all angles." My guess: you'll be able to shoot and share concert videos.
(Credit: Research In Motion)Soon, BlackBerry fans will be able to get in on the fun. Research In Motion, which is sponsoring the U2 360 tour, has posted a page on its Web site declaring the imminent arrival of the U2 "mobile album."
Although the video teaser is fairly cryptic, it looks like the app will let users listen to the latest U2 album "No Line on the Horizon," watch videos, and read news updates. A more interesting twist: it also looks like users will be able to share video clips from U2 concerts--a map will let you pick among BlackBerry-toting audience members with different stage angles.
U2 fans with BlackBerries can sign up here to be informed when the app's released. No word yet on timing or pricing. One possibility: the app might launch in conjunction with the Blackberry Tour 9630 on July 12.
Whether you're a U2 fan or not, it's great to see RIM getting serious about mobile music, and I think it'll help cement RIM's position alongside Apple at the top of the consumer smartphone heap.
Follow Matt on Twitter.
Like most people who've had a chance to play with it, I've been impressed with Microsoft's Surface, the multitouch tabletop computer that the company began demonstrating about two years ago.
It drew some mockery compared with the svelte iPhone, which emerged around the same time, but it's meant for a completely different experience: collaborative public spaces rather than solo communications. Unfortunately, I haven't had much opportunity to share my excitement--apart from a handful of deployments in hotels and AT&T stores; there aren't many of these tables out in the wild yet.
Which is a shame, because Surface partners are starting to put together some interesting apps. Take, for example, this DJ application put together by design company Vectorform. It lets you string together samples and beats into a simple musical track. Vectorform demonstrated the first version last August, and now Microsoft and Vectorform have created a video demonstrating the alpha of version 2.0, which offers some new features like scratching.
The video gets shamelessly promotional in the second half, and I don't imagine this app will ever become a professional DJ's tool, but it could be fun as a diversion in a bar or lounge, especially if the same table had other musical applications on it.
So why aren't these things out there in bulk? Probably because each table costs more than $12,500 to start, with deployment and maintenance service extra. You'd have to sell a lot of extra drinks to justify that kind of expense.
Follow Matt on Twitter
This is just a quick pointer to a hilarious post I ran across this morning: BBC Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell, to wear a vintage Sony Walkman for a day. He took the challenge seriously, and wrote up his impressions of the Walkman versus the modern equivalent.
Some choice excerpts:
"It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape."
"I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly."
"I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day."
The only advantage Campbell found for the Walkman was the fact that it had two headphone jacks, allowing listeners to share their favorite tunes with a friend. He also noted that the battery life was terrible at about 3 hours, but neglected to point out the (perhaps obvious) fact that at least the Walkman lets you get to the batteries to replace them--you don't have to send it back to the manufacturer or risk voiding your warranty. Another point I'd make for Campbell or other intrepid explorers: some Walkmans had a "reverse" switch on them that let you change to the other side of the cassette--that could be another nifty way to create an equivalent to the iPod's shuffle feature.
Now wait until he discovers Minidisc!
Follow Matt on Twitter
My wife has been trying to convince me to get a protector for my iPhone ever since she bought hers, a silicone sleeve made by Belkin, at the Apple Store a few months ago. But I didn't like any of the designs they had at the Apple Store. I was looking for something more original, edgier.
Pretty is as pretty does.
I can't remember exactly what terms I entered into Google, but the Gelaskins Web site came up prominently in the search results. The designs were cool. The price seemed right at less than $15. The copy on the site emphasized both protection and customizability. So, I picked my design, paid my $18 ($15 plus $3 for standard shipping), and waited.
What I didn't do was read CNET's 2006 review. If I had seen the very apt phrase "artistic stickers that do double-duty as scratch protectors," I wouldn't have been so surprised that this thing is basically a decal. It's got a rubberized texture and special glue that makes it easy to peel off and on--it took me a couple tries to ensure that I didn't have any bubbles--but otherwise it's not much different from the free stickers you get at shows. I'm sure my three-year-old daughter would have been happy to decorate my phone with some of those.
I also made a mistake by ordering the iPhone version instead of the iPhone 3G version. As a result, I've got a quarter-inch of exposed space--the 3G versions wrap around the side on part of the phone, although they still leave the top bare. Even so, 18 bucks for a decal seems awfully steep. Lesson learned--even for impulse buys, read the review.
Tell Matt he's dumb on Twitter.
The idea of a digital music kiosk, where customers can walk up, press a few buttons on a screen, and download music to some sort of portable storage medium (disc, phone, flash card), has been around for a few years now. Starbucks ended a two-year experiment with in-store CD burners back in 2006, and U.K. music retailer HMV began offering free downloads to USB drives from in-store kiosks in 2007.
Even if the trend hasn't exactly taken off, companies continue to try them out. Earlier this week, Seattle-based start-up MOD Systems entered the fray, announcing that it had signed deals with all four major labels, allowing it to package more than 5 million DRM-free songs for digital distribution via in-store kiosks.
There's a bit of irony in the announcement, as MOD co-founder Anthony Bay used to lead Microsoft's Windows Media Division, whose business model relied heavily on DRM (digital rights management). Microsoft hoped to convince content owners that it had a robust DRM system so they'd use Windows Media technologies to encode and host their content. But that was almost 10 years ago, and now that the recording industry has come around to the idea of selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes, Amazon, and countless other online stores, there's no reason to restrict retail kiosks from doing the same.
So is there any future for digital music kiosks? It's hard to imagine shopping at a digital-only record store when it's so much easier to buy MP3s over the Web on my home computer--which is where I store them anyway--or over the air from a phone or wireless-connected player. But kiosks might find a place in multipurpose retailers and big-box stores, where they'd take up a lot less space than the CD racks currently in place, or in other places with lots of foot traffic--hotel lobbies, malls, university campuses, and so on. I can even imagine a jukebox that not only lets you play songs, but also lets you download them to a flash drive--great for those late-night impulse buys.
Follow Matt on Twitter
