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Doomsday Predictions From 20 Years Past!


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This crazy nutter Chip "Nostradamus" McDonald posted "here" almost 20 years ago... (holy frak...).. in a thread Craig started called "Napster: the End of the Record Biz

 

 

he effect of Napster won't show up for another... half year I would think.

 

In the short haul, people will clamor to grab everything they can. Probably for about a year. This is going to have a big effect I think on sales.

 

There was another forum a little before this time of that post, it's apparently evaporated from the internet, that had Alan Parsons, George Massenburg, and... maybe Roger Nichols and ... a few other Big Name Guys

I don't recall at the moment. In that forum I was basically asking them as a whole to push DVD-audio, surround as a standard for car stereos (making a larger file format, making the internet a more difficult medium for it), because otherwise MP3 technology was going to wipe out the industry.

 

Of which they found amusing, since "nobody will choose to listen to an inferior sound" and "nothing is going to be easier to use than a CD!" etc..

 

Hmm. Maybe it's not surprising that has disappeared from the InterToobs.

 

I predict music aimed at young girls will not be impacted much at all. Which means the industry might refocus on that aspect more than ever. Uhg.

 

Taylor Swift? Frozen? Ahrgh.

 

The end result will mean reputation for live music will become more important to artists.

 

I should have wrote "most important".

 

The industry could learn a lot by noticing what is popular on Napster. Much more accurate than any other rating system....

 

The funny thing here is that they're trying to game Spotify/Apple Music/Google Music, and still getting blindsided by Bolts From the Blue.

 

 

new Allan Holdsworth - not just because I don't think MP3's sound as good, but because I know he needs and deserves the money.

 

R.I.P. Allan.

 

attitude will be something of what will come about over a period of time. Call it "Voluntary Socially Selective Communism".

 

I was inversely right about that, a new Communist attitude did arise: "music should be free!". A predictable result of devaluing quality.

 

An interesting curve:

 

1) Music and musicians were valued, records/cds bought and paid for.

2) It became available for "free".

3) Industry laid down and tried to compete by being cheaper and cheaper in artist development.

 

During this period a watershed event happened. I had a student bring in a song to learn on his IPod - it was something off of one of *my* cds I'd had on MP3.com. He'd gotten it off of Napster of all things, but

didn't have any quarrel with bringing it to me having done that.

 

4) The industry reacts too late and allows streaming to happen. Music is now officially worth nothing.

 

So last year a student brought something I'd had on Spotify in, and of course it costs nobody anything at all these days.

 

5) Music is marginalized as either a lost art, or an activity akin to throwing a baseball around.

 

 

The only difference between Napster and the manner that radio functions in is that it offers immediate satisfaction of tastes. If there were radio stations that would play only music a person was interested in 24 hours a day, there would be a similar situation.

 

 

Yikes.

 

 

Here's the funniest bit, something I think I tried to get across to the aforementioned panel of Industry Names but were unbelieving:

 

What people don't want to face is that music is now effectively as ubiquitous as "software". Perhaps the notion of music having to be sold at a retail outlet is now dated.

 

Yikes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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It's curious to see what has changed.

 

I think I was using Cool Edit at the time, but... I now champion a DAW made by the programmer of WinAmp (Reaper). Cakewalk, the first program I did Primitive First Steps with Digital Audio, is now "free" as Sonar.

 

....and my VS-880 I saved and paid so much for is worth nothing. Hah. But Roland is still making obfuscated musical products. "Hah".

 

Sigh.

 

 

 

 

 

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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What's changed the most is that anything physical has become virtual.

 

I think we're in for a backlash against skeumorphic "virtualized" software, and emulations. The Neural amp sim would be a harbinger for that, and the popularity of the Izotope products with their "modern" looking UIs - as more and more people become educated to guitar and studio sounds based on spectral character instead of "you use that box with the Fender logo to make that kind of sound".

 

Which I actually think is a loss, because there are real reasons the classic devices ARE classics. Decades of evolution of process of using an 1176 for one thing, Neve for another is based on real outcomes. People will move away and drift backwards to less than satisfactory paradigms, like the person that wants a Tweed Bassman sound. but wants it to come out of his Orange half stack.

 

 

 

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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