Looking For Water…
A recent piece on arcticstartup.com recalled a 2002 David Bowie interview with The New York Times in which he foresaw the arrival of the likes of Spotify with his observations that ”music itself is going to become like running water or electricity”.
I remember feeling decidedly uncomfortable with his predictions at the time, primarily because it suggested the end of the system most of us have enjoyed since our teenage years…whatever our ages.
As I sit here listening to music via Spotify (It’s bloody convenient) I realise the inevitability of those predictions, but take some small comfort in the belief that there will always be some kind of cottage industry for well-made specialist items along the lines of recent releases by Radiohead, NIN and David Byrne & Bryan Eno at least.
I’m sure the sale of music will continue to evolve for a long time to come and it’s hard to imagine now that sheet music was the most important ‘format’ when it came to selling music all those years ago.
I’ll leave you with the relevant bit from that New York Times article. It’s incredible to note just how accurate DB’s predictions were…
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His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet’s effect on careers. ”I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way,” he said. ”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”
”Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,” he added. ”So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”
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