Think about what it should have been like on the flip of the twentieth century when a household first welcomed a phonograph or a gramophone into their residence. For the primary time in human historical past, music by the most important performers on the earth was out there to you on-demand. Quite than must journey to an incredible opera home someplace, you had been capable of summon stars like Enrico Caruso to sing in your house only for you at any time of the day or evening. It was magic.

And extra was to come back. After the First World Warfare, radio appeared, bringing not simply music into your own home, however information and all kinds of leisure from across the planet. It couldn’t probably get any higher than this, proper?

However know-how continued to ship wonders. In June 1948, we acquired the 33 1/3 RPM long-playing album, which allowed the house listener to take pleasure in as much as 22 minutes of uninterrupted music by the most effective on the earth. FM radio, with its high-fidelity sign, began to catch on within the Fifties, adopted by the craze for high-end audio tools for the house. That was adopted in brief order by the 8-track and cassette (private music on the go, together with the automotive!), which had been outdated by the compact disc, high-tech plastic circles that promised excellent sound ceaselessly. At that time, we had been positive we’d achieved the best attainable stage of high quality and comfort when it got here to got here to consuming music.

Then the digital age actually hit within the Nineteen Nineties, due to the web. When Napster and their ilk got here alongside in 1999, we all of the sudden might entry all of the music we needed at any time of the day AND FOR FREE! If we needed to be a little bit extra scrupulous, there was at all times the iTunes Music Retailer, which provided low cost, authorized downloads from a library that expanded day by day. And all these digital recordsdata might both be burned onto a CD-R for the automotive or loaded into a conveyable machine that by no means skipped regardless of how a lot you shook it. (I bear in mind dazzling my neighbour with an RCA Lyra which might maintain — gasp! — an hour’s price of songs!)

When the iPod Basic with its 160 GB arduous drive appeared, it was attainable to hold round 40,000 songs in a package deal smaller than a deck of playing cards. How might it get any higher than this?

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But it did. As folks had been snapping up iPod Classics in 2009, a brand new factor known as streaming was gathering steam. These new firms, beginning with Rhapsody in 2001 and exploding with the debut of Spotify in 2008, promised entry to hundreds of thousands, then tens of hundreds of thousands of songs, for subsequent to nothing. Obtained a music in your head? So long as you had an web connection, you may be listening in seconds.

What we now have now was science fiction 20 years in the past. The truth is, we now take as a right that we are able to take heed to any music created by humanity — some 75 million songs or so and counting — anytime we would like, wherever we occur to be, on no matter machine we occur to have at that second. We’ve lastly reached the head of music consumption.

Or have we? What might probably come after streaming? Let’s speculate wildly.

Scientists and engineers are already engaged on eliminating the necessity for carrying headphones or earbuds. Think about, for a second, that you might have a tiny machine the dimensions of an ornamental stud put in simply behind your ear at, say, a tattoo parlour, the identical approach you may get your ears pierced. Utilizing the ideas of bone conduction — one thing already a actuality in each military-grade headsets and commercially out there headphones — audio is beamed immediately into your cranium from a tool in your pocket. You hear the audio (music, a cellphone name, no matter) however as a result of your ears are in any other case unoccupied, you additionally clearly hear what’s happening on the earth round you.

Subsequent up can be ditching the necessity for any type of exterior machine fully. May we be became strolling antennae? Or what about having our personal always-on private algorithmic editor — an idea that’s already been explored in a lot of sci-fi novels — that can serve up content material primarily based on how we’re feeling or (I daresay) pondering? I wouldn’t depend it out. The truth is, Spotify is already shifting on this course with its temper evaluation patents.

Elon Musk has an organization known as Neuralink which is exploring brain-computer interfaces — implants, in different phrases. A coin-sized machine, designed to be implanted within the cranium a number of millimetres away from the mind, is being examined. Musk envisions these implants as options to varied forms of medical points, however what’s to say that they couldn’t be used as receivers for audio leisure?

High quality. However what about visible leisure? I wouldn’t depend out good glasses. Google Glass was attention-grabbing however didn’t catch on with shoppers for a wide range of causes, but its Enterprise Editon has discovered a spot in sure workplaces the place hands-free actions are necessary. The corporate is finishing up loads of R&D on this house in anticipation of competitors from Apple, which is working by itself glasses-type wearable that would hit the market subsequent yr.

If such glasses are accepted by the general public, concentrate. Video leisure, augmented actuality, digital actuality, reside streaming, and gaming, all hands-free, and 100 per cent transportable, will probably be in every single place. Mix that with an exterior machine (or higher but, an implant) and the chances are countless.

Suppose we’re zombies now strolling round in our little bubbles of audio? Simply wait.

Creepy or cool? Both approach, the longer term is on its approach.

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Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for International Information.

Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing Historical past of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play