Music in the Year 2070

We’ve had music for hundreds of years, but it really hasn’t been until the past century that we’ve really branched out into the multitude of genres that we now have. This is due in large part to technology advancements that have not only allowed us to develop new and refined instruments, but allowed use to accelerate and simplify the process of sharing music around the world, creating a melting pot of ideas and inspirations that form the quickly ever-evolving music landscape. This begs the question, what kind of music will we be listening to in 50 years?

Two and half scores ago (shout out to Abe Lincoln), it was the year 1970, and the US was listening to The Jackson Five, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Stevie Wonder on their cassette tape decks in their Ford Galaxies and Mercury Cougars. Times were different. Classic rock wasn’t classic yet and the oldies were still just the adulties. If you grew up in the 70s, your parents were probably yelling at you about how they don’t make music like they used to and playing their vinyl records of Elvis at home. 

We had a rock revolution, we went through punk, rap was introduced, we went back to punk via grunge, pop became a genre, country became distinct from folk, R&B shot into popularity, rock developed an alternative side, trap music was birthed, EDM became a thing, and acoustic is now popular again. The point is, music has recently gone through a crazy amount of phases and changes.

So to predict what music will be like in 50 years is next to impossible. We can guess we’ll still be using guitars, computers, and/or our voices, and we’ll still be drawing inspiration from old music, which is currently new music. What gets funky is when you start to think about what the adults will be listening to. Imagine a 70 year old floating down the street in their flying Tesla and bumping some Lil Yachty. The oldies will be the ancienties(?). We’ll probably be on our fourth version of punk. Or who knows, maybe we’ll complete the cycle and go back to classical music and the kids on the internet will be getting into fights over whether they rep Mozart or Beethoven.

Nostalgia is always going to be a factor, so one thing is for certain, like vinyl, CDs will make a comeback at some point. If disposable cameras can do it, so can compact discs. Heck even iPods will probably make a reappearance, probably around 2070 in fact. 

Songs could become entirely computer generated. A lot of pop music already follows a formula and professional quality beats can be composed in GarageBand, a software that every Mac comes preloaded with. What’s more, voice generation software is getting better and better every year. Siri is becoming more and more human, so much so that the movie “Her”, starring Joaquin Pheonix and Scarlett Johansson, in which Pheonix falls in love with his digital assistant, is threatening to become reality. The point is, you pair a formulaic music genre with realistic voice generation, and you soon find yourself sorting Spotify by “Human” vs “Android” songs. I’m sure the music industry will find a way of naming these categories that won’t make it sound so creepy, perhaps “Natural” vs “Humanoid”.

So who knows, maybe one day you’ll find yourself walking into your favorite coffee shop and hear “My Heart Beats For Her”, sung by Adam’s Dell 472x Desktop.