When Beethoven wrote Symphony No.5 or Mozart his No.40, few people would’ve heard them more than once. The experience of hearing one of their symphonies was literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
When the Beatles released their world dominating LPs in the ‘60s, you had to listen to them from beginning to end. This persisted from vinyl, to cassettes, and through to CDs.
We’re now in the age of streaming and sharing. We rarely listen to albums beginning to end. Instead, we listen to playlists shared by friends, Spotify send us personalised recommendations each week, and the shuffle habit takes us from the 2020s to the 1970s and back again within the space of 5 minutes.
And I don’t think we’re stopping here.
The future will see sampling, remixing, sound manipulation, and collaborations between artists and fans at levels we find hard to imagine right now. You just have to look at the remixes of classic song that take off on TikTok to get a glimpse of what could come.
Music is going to look really different in the future, but I think it could also be much more collaborative, creative, and fun.
H/T: Kevin Kelly and his 2016 book, The Inevitable. In it he talks about 12 tech trends that will shape the coming 30 years. He mentions music in a number of chapters and his thoughts on this topic inspired this post. Now that I’m reading it 5 years after publication, a lot of what Kelly wrote about back then feels directionally correct with where we’re heading.