The prediction, in brief:

We have digital distribution. The next step will be virtual record companies.

Predictor: Curry, Adam

Prediction, in context:

In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Adam Fisher interviews MTV video jockey Adam Curry after he started a site named mtv.com. Fisher writes:”When Adam Curry started hanging on the Net – in the music newsgroups and so forth – no one believed that he was who he said he was: an MTV VJ … After six months of Net surfing, Curry now hangs at his own Internet site: mtv.com. As system op, he posts MTV out-takes in QuickTime, pens gossip about the entertainment industry in a column called ‘CyberSleaze,’ and is beginning to think about the online future of recorded music … MTV knows about mtv.com, of course, but according to Curry, ‘MTV is just not interested in anything that doesn’t make money for them.’ Record companies, on the other hand, are more aware of the implications of rock ‘n’ roll on the Net and view Curry as a smart rodent running circles around the aging dinosaurs. ‘They’re absolutely terrified. We have digital distribution. The next step,’ according to Curry, ‘will be virtual record companies.’ A virtual record company wouldn’t press any records. It wouldn’t need to. Rather, it would distribute music over the Net, cutting out the middleman (read: real record companies) by delivering music directly to a customer’s stereo. ‘I could do it right now,’ says Curry, who adds that the technical problems lie mainly in uploading money, not in downloading music. Perversely, the real roadblock turns out to be not technical but cultural. For the scheme to work, people would have to become accustomed to paying for goods and services over the Net.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: Music

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: From Video Jock to System Op

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.01/eword.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney