I made a tentative calendar that details what the next 33 years in music will be like, starting next week:
The World State of Music: A.F.
107 A.F. (2015 A.D. in the Gregorian Calendar) Australian band Tame Impala release their third studio effort, Currents. Extremely well received, both critically and commercially, the album catapults them into the mainstream. At the peak of their fame, they enjoy incredible success for modern standards. Shortly after the release, they become “the biggest band in the world.”
108 A.F. Music festivals continue to attract thousands of fans solely for the “experience.” Musical acts become tertiary to drug intake and socialization, now the main appeal of festivals around the United States. Culturally insensitive fashions and drug overuse are rampant.
108 A.F. Due to advances in technology and the integration of cloud computing and streaming as a preferred source of music, listeners have increasingly less ownership of their music. Therefore, they feel less and less compelled to buy it in physical form as time goes by.
108 A.F. Music festival lineups become increasingly homogenized as musical variety ceases to be the main focus of these events. Bands like Flaming Lips and The Strokes now almost exclusively operate under the “festival house band” model with many big name acts following suit. Tame Impala, the latest sensation, soon joins the ranks of these festival giants. This renders many lineups to be nearly identical from city to city, festival to festival.
108 A.F. The large majority of broadcasting channels and radio stations are now completely owned by a few select corporations and therefore have continuous rotations with increasingly limited variety and musical scope. Overly-produced, formulaic songs are now the norm in FM Radio. Lyrical writing levels in mainstream music are at an all-time low. Limited to their unvarying respective genres, staff-writers hired by major labels mass produce carefully calculated songs with different combinations of a small variety of subjects; pussy, ass, money, beer, trucks, bitches, shots (both gun and liquor), and bottles are all celebrated topics in mainstream music of the early 21st century.
108 A.F. Multi-genre underground music scenes around the world, while rich in good content and musical variety, are unable to penetrate the barriers imposed by the few companies who now control an extremely large portion of the music industry. Soon, they start to slowly but steadily dissipate.
109 A.F. Leon Bridges rises to mainstream prominence with his brand of classic R n'B. Having started out as a dishwasher in Ft. Worth, Tx the 27 year old is now one of the biggest artists in the world. An extremely rare case, Bridges is one of the very few “discovered, not manufactured” mainstream artists of such commercial success. Unusually for this time period, Bridges employs fully live instrumentation, analog production and substantial lyrical content, albeit borrowing stylistically from past artists. Before him, Adele enjoyed comparable success with a similarly stripped down musical style.
109 A.F. Former thriving music scenes like Austin, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles continue to fall prey to big business and gentrification. Most musicians are priced out of the cities while many venues and music institutions become replaced by strip malls, banks, or luxury living complexes.
111 A.F. Tame Impala releases their fourth studio album, this time having a completely electronic sound not at all reminiscent of their previous studio albums. Though, initially well-received, it fails to retain the hype of the last and teenage audiences are quickly lured by the next pop sensation with just the right formula.
112 A.F. Kim Kardashian releases her debut pop rap album,PU$$Y//A$$ produced by self-proclaimed “Best Producer In The World” Kanye West. While critically panned, the album reaches #2 on the Billboard Charts, second only to Transformers 7: The Soundtrack.
114 A.F. At the threat of becoming “stale,” Leon Bridges moves on to an electronic style of music. The live band is gone and he now performs choreographed dance moves whilst lip syncing. Bridges achieves unprecedented levels of commercial success.
116 A.F. Paul McCartney, the last Beatle alive, dies at 82 years old. #NowPaulisDead trends on twitter. His death marks the end of an era. The Beatles’ music sales experience a large spike which industry analysts call “the dying breath” of music sales.
115 A.F. After attempting to record new material and reinvent Tame Impala’s brand, Kevin Parker becomes frustrated while trying to cope with how unrecognizable his sound has become. Unable to produce something he genuinely enjoys, he announces publicly that he is going on an indefinite hiatus.
117 A.F.(2025 A.D.) Due to the decreased exposure to the masses (particularly the young), the guitar and other musical instruments experience a rapid decline in popularity as a hobby. Big musical instrument stores like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, and Musician’s Friend are forced to carry out massive downsizes reducing their operations to suit very small niche bubbles of consumers around the United States. Many independent “ma and pa” instrument shops have unfortunately gone out of business by this point.
118 A.F. Lady Gaga finally performs her long-delayed concert in space. After witnessing this historical event, Beethoven's illegitimate long-lost great great great great grandson, Ludwig Khan Beethoven, has a visionary experience. Despite all indications of it being a bad economic decision, this vision inspires him to open up his own music production company: Synthefreude Records.
119 A.F. After being erroneously pronounced legally dead for the fourth time within two years, Keith Richards is still going strong.
119 A.F. Katy Perry's breast comes unscrewed at a show in LA's Laser Adhesive Center (Formerly the Staples Center) exposing her to be a fembot made of completely robotic parts. She is immediately seized by government agents and taken offstage. The spectators that night are treated to complimentary kool aid on the way out. The public never finds out about this.
120 A.F. Music is now a supremely rare subject to be taught in schools. It is mostly a pleasure reserved for those who seek it themselves, or those who are lucky enough to be born into a musical family.
120 A.F. Through questionable methods, Synthefreude acquires all the music rights of the three biggest record companies. Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music subsequently go out of business.
121 A.F. - 129 A.F. Replacement Synthefreude Records subsequently adds a hologram division to their label. Instead of signing musicians, the record label now deals exclusively with computer programmers and virtual reality animators and uses their vast catalog of song rights to supply their touring "bands." Able to remain young-looking forever and execute music with excruciating precision and invariable dynamic, hologram bands become the norm for the music industry, replacing aging musicians prone to human error. While some human musicians remain, the hologram craze effectively replaces what was, until then, known as the music industry. One of the very last pre-Fordian music institutions in the world, the New England Conservatory of Music closes its doors due to a lack of applicants as the new generations fail to produce young human musicians. Many other music conservatories and universities follow in their footsteps. Most historical buildings in their campuses are leveled to make way for parking garages and office buildings. The former Juilliard School of Music building in New York City now serves as Synthefreude’s world headquarters.
129 A.F. The Rolling Stones, now an indie band without rights to their old music, wrap up their 75th anniversary shows failing to sell more tickets than their synthetically young hologram counterparts managed by Synthefreude. Fed up with the band's decline, Keith Richards,93 years old, goes into a deep cryogenic freeze with an indefinite revitalization date.
129 - 139 A.F. The Age of Joy With most former prominent musicians now out of the picture, Ludwig Khan and his associates have total control of the music industry and its output. The power-hungry Khan soon finds that the key to controlling the rest of the world is in the music. After unsuccessful attempts to exert mind control using pre-existing songs (which were not designed, or “written” as they used to say, with the purpose of conditioning), Khan commissions the best scientists in the world to help him develop a way of cloning famous musicians that can create new mind-numbing material. Together, they manage to isolate the gene that causes musical adeptness. Thousands of musician embryos are bottled and injected with a mutated form of this gene through a procedure called the Wayneovsky Process. They are subsequently placed in the Azaleator Apparatus where they are genetically extracted of any potential desire for creating good music and instead conditioned to create mind numbing sounds to dull the population. Finally they are hatched and grown in incubators. With a new whole repertoire of clone musicians unwilling to disobey orders, Synthefreude Records holds the first music festival in space: Earthella. While only the elite are able to attend, the strange synthetic music is broadcast onto Earth and can be heard all over the globe, regardless of location. After the broadcast, multiple reports of bizarre behaviour surface. A wave of complacency washes over the people of Earth who now feel no eagerness to challenge or even question authorities. With a lack of conviction, humans become cogs in Ludwig Khan’s master plan to control the Earth. He is able to manipulate the population into submission by broadcasting invasive frequencies that stun their minds. This allows Khan and his associates to overrun the world with their crime and tastelessness.