The prediction, in brief:

[Unlimited access to music online] would be a nightmare. Music publishers have fits over this kind of thing. Distributors have already panicked over digital audiotape and pretty much crushed it. They’re so fearful of the future. They don’t stop to wonder if they’d like to swap what they do now in return for a monthly subscription fee from every home that gets cable TV.

Predictor: Thompson, Ken

Prediction, in context:

For a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Charles Platt interviews Unix inventor Ken Thompson about his ideas for audio compression and an online music-distribution system. Platt asks Thompson if his plan for a central network library of all recorded music would cause trouble due to its impact on the current distribution structure. Platt writes:”‘It would be a nightmare,’ Thompson agrees. ‘Music publishers have fits over this kind of thing. Distributors have already panicked over digital audiotape and pretty much crushed it. They’re so fearful of the future. They don’t stop to wonder if they’d like to swap what they do now in return for a monthly subscription fee from every home that gets cable TV.’ But what about piracy? With unlimited access to every piece of music ever recorded, there would be unlimited home taping. Thompson doesn’t see this as a problem. ‘Once you have all the music stored somewhere – it doesn’t have to be central, so long as it seems central – this alone would protect it. To reproduce the entire service, someone would have to invest a huge amount of money. You could steal a song, but who could steal them all? And if the listening fee is low enough, no one would bother to make copies. You’d just pay another nickel to hear the song again. I think it would sell 10 times as much music as people buy now. But the guys who are potential losers are scared to death of it, and the guys who are potential winners aren’t even aware of it. You don’t find cable TV companies thinking about audio.’ So how is it going to happen? ‘I have no idea how it’s going to be funded,’ Thompson says. ‘I don’t even care if it’s going to be successful commercially,’ he shrugs. ‘I just want to use it.'”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: Music

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Music on Demand: Bell Labs’s Ken Thompson, the Father of Unix, Has Invented a New Technology that Could Mean Never Having to Buy a CD Again

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.08/thompson_pr.html

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