Ted Gioia: belief

Transcript context

…But if we look at broader trends — so in the 1960s, we have what we now call classic rock and the Beatles, also in the ’70s. The early 1980s, rap comes along. It’s still with us — maybe that’s surprising. In the early ’90s, you might say there’s electronica. But what has been since then that’s new? What’s the next big thing? Or has it stopped? Well, there’s a certain irony here. The music business always prided itself on disrupting the culture with some new sound. But the big thing in the last 20 years is, the music business itself has been disrupted. They’re on the receiving end, and tech companies in Silicon Valley have done the disrupting. And what they’re disrupting is not the sound of music. It’s actually the whole socioeconomic setting of music. Now, you ask yourself, what did the music industry do to respond to this? What was their big innovation? And it’s almost laughable. If you go back to the early years of this century, when the internet was taking over music distribution and the music culture, the biggest innovation in music was — and this is sad to say — it was the TV reality-show singing contest. [laughs] This was the big innovation that the music industry used to respond to this complete disruption and everything else. “Well, we’ll do American Idol; we’ll do America’s Got Talent.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. I want to make one more observation, though. There are periods in music where it seems like there’s a lull and that we’ve reached some happy end point. My historical research tells me that those happy end points never last. Take for example, the rise of rock and roll. Five years earlier, the music industry thought they had it all solved. “Oh, people want lifestyle music. We’ll do romantic ballads by Sinatra.” They came out with mood music albums. They invented these amazing albums called bachelor pad albums back then, and novelty songs. And the music industry in 1952, 1953 thought they had it all figured out. They thought they had reached the perfect song for every moment in your day. And then five years later, rock and roll changed everything with disruption. How did this happen? What they don’t realize, people want disruption. The same thing happened in the 1970s. The early 1970s was the gentle singer-songwriter. You could take those Carole King albums or James Taylor albums. You could play them for Grandma. Grandma would love them. You couldn’t have something that was more beautiful and had wider appeal, but people wanted disruption again. So at the end of the ’70s, you had punk rock, disco, new wave. The important thing to understand is, not only is there disruption in music. People crave the disruption. Look at right now. Right now, we’re told that we’ve reached this happily ever after. Tech companies were going to use artificial intelligence to find the perfect song for every moment in our day. It will be curated. There’ll be these wonderful feedback loops. Robots will create the perfect musical life. My belief, based on my understanding of music history, is that won’t happen. There will be disruption, and it will come from an unexpected place, and this happily ever after we’ve supposedly reached won’t last. What’s the popular song you’re most embarrassed to admit to really liking?…

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