Post by ChrisB on Jun 18, 2014 23:57:28 GMT
Here's a proposal that was made in 1983 for what is essentially a system that allows subscribers to download music, barely a year after CD was introduced.
I'm not going to copy the whole thing, but here's the 'crux of the biscuit':
It was a proposal to a potential investor and in many ways, if it had been taken seriously the record industry might not have ended up with the mess it's in today
Another short quote:
But unfortunately for the record industry, the under-valued customers found a way to plug these things together for themselves.
The whole thing is here. It's not too lengthy but is very interesting and like a lot of the work by its author, it's both entertaining and amusing.
I'm not going to copy the whole thing, but here's the 'crux of the biscuit':
We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).
Another short quote:
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.
But unfortunately for the record industry, the under-valued customers found a way to plug these things together for themselves.
The whole thing is here. It's not too lengthy but is very interesting and like a lot of the work by its author, it's both entertaining and amusing.
