The record store of the future will have a bed to lie in, a well-stocked refrigerator, a bathroom with a shower and maybe even a couch or two. The record store of the future will be your home … Computer users will simply click their mice on albums they’re interested in, then sit back while the music is transferred, or downloaded, through high-tech telephone lines to their CD drives, which will capture the music on compact disks. Computer printers will spit out album artwork and liner notes. Further in the future, CD’s may be abolished altogether; consumers will be able to listen to whatever song or album they want by ordering it (for a fee) on their cable television box. Record labels would no longer be necessary: anyone with a song and a computer could just put it online.
Predictor: Strauss, Neil
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for The New York Times, Neil Strauss covers the future of recorded music. Strauss writes: ”The record store of the future will have a bed to lie in, a well-stocked refrigerator, a bathroom with a shower and maybe even a couch or two. The record store of the future will be your home. In the race to colonize the Internet, that vast network of interlocked computers that is moving in more and more on daily life, the music business has been setting up virtual storefronts with uncharacteristic alacrity. The utopian vision (or dystopian, for record store owners) is that one day a significant chunk of record purchases will take place on line. Computer users will simply click their mice on albums they’re interested in, then sit back while the music is transferred, or downloaded, through high-tech telephone lines to their CD drives, which will capture the music on compact disks. Computer printers will spit out album artwork and liner notes. Further in the future, CD’s may be abolished altogether; consumers will be able to listen to whatever song or album they want by ordering it (for a fee) on their cable television box. Record labels would no longer be necessary: anyone with a song and a computer could just put it online.”
Date of prediction: October 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Music
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: Records of the Future: At Your Fingertips
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=026ec071862bc0c693159432b586268b&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtb-lSlAl&_md5=372dda92b5d07a2763adb86480c1cd9f
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty