A Proposal For A System To Replace Ordinary Record Merchandising (1983)

I had the opportunity to work with Frank Zappa years ago. We enjoyed many long conversations during dinner. He was a really interesting man. Lots of, shall we say, unique, ideas. He had a particular distain for organized religion and politicians, placing both of them as evils that take advantage of the poor, gullible and uninformed. One night he proposed the idea of creating a new church that would take everything all the other religions said you could not do and made it OK. His words: "There's a market that is not being served out there".

In 1896, Thaddeus Cahill filed a patent on the “art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electronically” and until 1914 he fed music signals down AT&#38;T’s telephone lines with his Telharmoniums apparatus.<p>Elisha Gray transmitted music over a telephone line in 1876 . He also invented the first electronic music instrument in 1874, calling it the “Musical Telegraph,” for which he was awarded US Patent 166,096 titled “Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones” on July 27, 1875.<p><a href="http://didyouknow.org/gray/" rel="nofollow">http://didyouknow.org/gray/</a><p>Commercial service:<p>Wilmington, Delaware, is enjoying a novel service through the telephone exchange. Phonograph music is supplied over the wires to those subscribers who sign up for the service. Attached to the wall near the telephone is a box containing a special receiver, adapted to throw out a large volume of sound into the room. A megaphone may be attached whenever service is to be given. The box is attached to the line wires by a bridged tap from the line circuit. At the central office, the lines of musical subscribers are tapped to a manual board attended by an operator. A number of phonographs are available, and a representative assortment of records kept on hand.<p>3c for a piece, 7c for a grand opera !<p>Telephony, December 18, 1909<p><a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1909musi.htm" rel="nofollow">http://earlyradiohistory.us/1909musi.htm</a><p>Of course recording technology wasn't good enough to make copies, so these were not distribution services but rather stream on demand.

<i>We require a LARGE quantity of money and the services of a team of _mega-hackers_ to write the software for this system. Most of the hardware devices are, even as you read this, available as off-the-shelf items, just waiting to be plugged into each other so they can put an end to "THE RECORD BUSINESS" as we now know it.</i><p>The call to disrupt, decades too early. The media landscape might look very different if Zappa had gotten somewhere with this.

I was a huge Zappa fan in my late teens/early twenties. I don't listen to his music much anymore, but I still consider him a personal hero. Read his autobiography and you'll idolize him as much as I do.<p>I definitely read this piece before, maybe in his book, and it was one of many ideas he put forth that were totally ahead of its time.<p>Zappa was one of the earliest advocates for digital recording techniques, and was most likely one of the first "major" musicians to make the switch.<p>Likewise, he was mashing up his own tracks across different recording sessions across multiple _years_ before it was made popular by off the shelf cut-and-paste audio apps.<p>Steve Jobs, Zappa, and countless others expounded ideas that seem outlandish and impossible in their present time only to become obvious 30 years later.<p>The moral of the story is listen to the crazy ones, watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow.

It is easy to think of this from today as something like spotify or usenet, but in many ways it does not sound so far from MTV (1981) with PDC[0] and a PDC tape recoder.<p>He appears to describe a system of music streams which could be subscribed to (cable TV channels, streaming a winamp playlist), with an notification system that would allow a machine to tape a song (sort of like RSS/ the recording codes on VCRs[0].. this appears to be where the phone line comes in AFAICT; although that shouldn't have been necessary). I don't think he is describing anything that would use a computer on the client side, or have any 'on-demand' feature.<p>0. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_Delivery_Control" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_Delivery_Control</a>

"Fondlement &#38; Fetishism Potential [F.F.P.]" is term that should be added to the lexicon of any product designer worth their salt.<p>It should be included as a standard rating along with things like usability when developing anything.

Blah, blah, home taping, blah, blah, CD's, blah, blah.<p>"Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar" :)<p>Some people miss Steve Jobs. I miss Frank Zappa. Genius.

Wow, that's pretty visionary. Comparable with Tesla's smartphone predictions.

&#62; [People today] CAN <i>HEAR</i> THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN <i>GOOD AUDIO</i> AND <i>BAD AUDIO</i> . . . THEY <i>CARE</i> ABOUT THAT DIFFERENCE, AND <i>THEY ARE WILLING TO GO TO SOME TROUBLE AND EXPENSE TO HAVE HIGH QUALITY 'PORTABLE AUDIO' TO USE AS 'WALLPAPER FOR THEIR LIFESTYLE'.</i><p>Given the way modern audiophiles have bitched and moaned about the sound quality of CD vs LP, the "loudness wars" in the mixing of pop music, the number of people who will happily listen to all their music on shitty laptop speakers, and the dominance of lossy compression… this part makes me want to reach back into 1983 and give Frank the patronizing pat on the head that you give to a small child who has said something wildly optimistic and out of touch with the real world.<p>(Also see "hardcore dubstep connoisseurs bagging on Skrillex for making a version that can be heard on crappy gear".)

Zappa has been one of my favorite American thinkers (and musicians) for years. He and Hunter S. Thompson are both dead now, so what do they have left?

Fuc*ing genius.