The sound of music in 2050

Speculating about next year is hard enough. Trying to look ahead 37 years is almost impossible, but they’ll give it a try.

Last weekend in NYC John La Grou was a keynote speaker at the Audio Engineering Society convention. He based some of his assumptions about how recorded music will evolve on Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors squeezed onto integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. That prediction was made in 1965, and if anything, Moore underestimated the cost savings we’ve enjoyed. La Grou rolled out statistic after statistic that painted a rosy future for music, gaming, and film tech advances in the coming decades.

La Grou believes that highly advanced gestural control and brain/machine interfaces will transform the way music is recorded and played back. That might preclude using a microphone to record the sound of an instrument or vocals; music in 2050 will be virtual and mostly electronic.