Listening to Tomorrow

A roundup of our month exploring the changing experience of music

And so it goes that another month passes, and with it we bring our music collection to a close. It feels like we’ve hosted a particularly broad range of perspectives on the future of music, including articles arguing in favor of reimagining it altogether as a locational thing, and even as a movement thing.

This — plus my own blog post about the success or failure of different instruments — has me wondering about what else we haven’t yet thought about when it comes to changing how we think about the music of tomorrow. Will musicians be clamoring for an instrument based on, say, smell?

(No, really — musicians reading this, have you ever wanted to invent a new way to make music? Let me know.)

Music month marks our final theme of 2015, before we begin anew in January 2016 exploring a conversation about Afrofuturism. We’re already open for pitches if you’d like to contribute; drop me a line at ian@howwegettonext.com.

Over the course of December, we published these stories:

• The future of music is not male: Laura Snapes details how, after too many years, women are finally claiming the credit, respect, and autonomy they deserve in the music industry.
• In conversation with Brian Eno: Steven Johnson sits down with the ambient musician to talk theories of art, music, and imagination in our exclusive interview.
• Future nostalgia: what we’ll miss when the music stops: Every generation of musicians has to create within certain technological limits, from the crackle of vinyl to the bleep-bloop of video game chips. So, what about how we listen to music today will we be nostalgic for in the future?
• Five pioneering music videos you’ve probably never seen: Music is about more than just a soundtrack. These are five examples of how musical innovation on screen pushed forward the art of filmmaking.
• ‘Bots’ will choose your music in 2030: If you enjoy Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists, they’re just the beginning of how we’ll learn about new music. Intelligent, live playlists will curate what we listen to—like our very own supercharged radio DJs.
• Putting music on the map: Maybe your favorite song never has to end. If we thought about music in terms of place, not time, we’d open up new possibilities for scoring and listening to it.
• What does your walk sound like? To follow on from the idea of using location to write music — what about movement? Map the human body as an instrument and it opens up near-infinite ways for shaping sound.
• Starting a band in 2030: It used to be so straightforward — get some friends together and jam in a garage, send out some demos, and get signed to a label. But thanks to some radical technological shifts, the music industry will look very different for the next generation of artists.
• The history (and future) of live music: Nothing highlights just how influential technology is to how we make and hear music than going to a live show with loads of really big lasers.
• Musicians: the robots are coming for your jobs: Why pay a composer to write a five-second jingle for your ad when a robot can do the same thing for free? The composers of tomorrow may have to find new roles herding AIs.
• Famous musicians make their instruments famous, too: The 20th century saw dozens, if not hundreds, of new instruments make use of the new science of electronics. But not every one of them took off — why not?
• High score: how video game music became the soundtrack of a generation: Music composed and performed for games is now just as serious a field as other artistic genres, and its appeal is likely to keep growing.
• … and don’t forget our collection of the best music writing from everywhere else, which we published at the start of the month.

We’re taking a break over the holidays, but after the New Year we’ll dive right into our next theme: Afrofuturism. We’re collaborating with the fabulous Florence Okoye to explore the dreams of a new generation of people from across the globe. Don’t miss it.

As always, if you’d like to take part, drop me an email: ian@howwegettonext.com. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store for 2016.