If 2024 Was 1964

 

What will 2020’s music sound like? Popular technologies will drive it, and most likely will be shaped with AI, as that seems to now be the cool “guitar” everyone wants in the shop window. In 1964, this same question was probably asked, and by the end of the 60s, music was vastly different, primarily because of advances in electronics and recording technology, and also generally by postwar hyper-growth. 2020s music may sound mostly the same, unless new kinds of instruments are invented and widely used.

 8/14/2017   
 

[8/14/2024: This is a pretty accurate prediction. However it is not a repeat of the 1960s in terms of learning to play an instrument. If 2024 was 1964, a guitar would be more of a plastic toy. Even the toy guitars in 1964 had strings on them. Where the Beatles went from 1964 to 1969 was where music would ultimately go in terms of being more of a cultural phenomenon than it was about music and became more intertwined with conceptual art. Perhaps AI music will be in a similar place in 2029 where it’s not about what it was 5 years earlier].