A Bygone Era

In 50 years there will be almost no one left who remembers going into a record store. Sure, there will be some old timers still talking about the old days, but the majority of the people who spent time perusing through aisles of LPs, then cassettes, and finally CDs will be gone.

And then, finally, the music business can change.

My theory is this. Right now the people running record companies still remember when they used to buy records at the record store. They can't imagine getting their music any other way. So as long as they're around, they'll keep trying to sell music the way they remember buying it.

So flash forward 50 years and the young music consumer will have NEVER walked into a store to make a purchase. They won't be missing anything.

I know, I don't have to flash forward 50 years, it's happening right now. Many 10 year olds have never been in a record store. But they ALL need to be gone. All the people that have ever walked into a place that let's you browse through rows and rows of graphic album or CD covers to choose music based on how the package looks or what a clerk recommends or what it sounds like played on the stereo with the crappy headphones in the corner.

My son will grow up getting music first from me and then from his friends. He won't buy it. Why would he? He'll burn it or drop it on a portable hard-drive or just sync it wirelessly with his music player. (I was careful not to say iPod there, but hek, is anyone ever going to make something better?) Maybe he won't even own it. It will be an app on his phone that streams music from the largest music catalog in the world that is either part of a cable bill or underwritten by an advertiser.

Point is, he'll never go shopping for music. It will just be there.

And thus dies what I grew up with and several generations before me. And when I'm gone, there will be no one to mourn for the loss of that experience.

It is sad, no doubt. But it's evolution.

Can you imagine wearing a suit every time you get on an airplane? Traveling by plane was something special, now we wear shorts and flip-flops on our $99 Southwest flight.

What if you didn't have air conditioning on a 100 degree day?

Riding to work on a horse. Is there anyone around who remembers life before the automobile?

And like those things that we can't even imagine doing, when asked if they miss going to a store to buy music, our children and our children's children will shudder and say, "what a giant pain in the ass!"