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".
> the idea of creating a new church that would take everything all the other religions said you could not do and made it OK.
detailed in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land
Also, Unitarian Universalism (a religion formed because Unitarianism and Universalism weren't broad enough!) is basically the most dilute religion. They have churches and services and community activities but no liturgy beyond a vague spirituality.
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&T’s telephone lines with his Telharmoniums apparatus.
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.
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.
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.
The call to disrupt, decades too early. The media landscape might look very different if Zappa had gotten somewhere with this.
Yes, it's sad that he became to ill before his planned run for president. Although he'd have failed miserably, even the thought of seeing him debating with Bush and Perot is worth something ;).
He was nearly special ambassador to the West on trade, culture and tourism for Czechoslovakia under Havel, but the idea was stomped on by US secretary of state James Baker for Zappa insulting his wife. http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-08/roc0816b.htm
"... a stuffed giraffe that squirted whipped cream on the audience."
Washington Senator Slade Gorton telling him to pipe down for mimicking Mrs. Baker's Southern accent in a Senate hearing. I would _love_ to see some video of that. C-SPAN archives?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Steve Jobs, Zappa, and countless others expounded ideas that seem outlandish and impossible in their present time only to become obvious 30 years later.
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.
Someone correct me if this is wrong but I think Dylan's Infidels was the first digitally recorded LP. I should probably Google it. Anyway, that was released in 1983, the same year as Zappa wrote this.
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.
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.
I read this as absolutely on-demand. Re-reading, I guess I'm making assumptions, but radio-over-phone/cable (by 'radio' I mean the 'server' transmits what it transmits and you're stuck with whatever's on currently) seems kinda dumb.
Your push concept (I say "your" because it's really not clear in the article what "subscribe" means) is a step up, but I wouldn't want to get spammed with whatever "they" decided to send me today.
Call in, dial codes for the genre, artist, album, or song; digital recorder thingy that's been listening in hears the screech of the digital stream and starts recording. Caller hangs up, recorder maintains connection until "download" is complete. In this scenario, I'd suggest that "subscribing to interest categories" just means a shortcut (less dialing) to get to music you like. You subscribe to "Hard Rock" or "Artists Similar to Queen" and you just dial less to select something to record.
My logic here hinges on "...without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape" and I'll concede I might have misinterpreted his intent.
I agree it is very confusing to figure out the exact intent from the text.
In the model i suggested you would look up and input a code that referred to a song, and it would start the recorder when that song was played (working like traffic report alerts meets TiVo). No spamming.
By broadcasting real-time streams via TV you would get a bandwidth ~400 songs/day/channel (a big selection for the time). To me 'subscribing to interest categories' would be exactly like subscribing to a cable channel; and it would give you the legal right to that group of songs.[0]
It seems 'TV cable' was definitely a transmission method (very unclear if the phone was an alternative data vehicle or just for control), and AFAIK there was no way of doing anything on-demand with TV cable. To get similar quality of audio via the phone would have taken ages[1], tying up the phone for a long time (+ associated costs). The only problem with the streaming model is that you have to wait for a song to come around. But you would be able to get a newly released song right away on it's first play (and nothing was on demand at the time) so it wouldn't be a big issue IMO.
Occam's razor suggests the stream concept is most likely; it fits the existing models and technology much closer. It would have been technically simple to implement and vastly cheaper.
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0. I think this is the real 'innovation' in this, rather than delivery method, which i'm not certain Zappa was 100% on.
1. i remember 128KB songs took ~15 minutes on 56K, so we are talking over an hour, even if we ignore the lack of MP3, processing/ temp storage requirements. Remember he talks about quality. Don't forget your landline was the only real-time contact you had with people who weren't in your road.
Indeed. His sardonic attacks on everyone, including himself, are priceless. And he was a great composer and guitarist as well... I still can't listen to We're Only In It For The Money or Overnite Sensation without bursts of laughter.
It is and at the same time it is not. I'm going to assume that Zappa knew a lot about the music business and just focus on the technical side.
In 1983 we were well into the BBS revolution and had 1200 baud modems (V.22 standard) making downloading of music files viable. There were BBS that had audio downloads around that time. Also, around that time the transmission of data via television became popular using teletext systems (which had started in the mid-1970s) and also direct data during programs downloaded to home computers (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857212). Also, the CD had just been released (1982 I think) and so all the ingredients were there: digital music format, distribution via phone or TV.
I think Zappa was very well aware of the technical side as well, being a Synclavier[1] 'geek' since 1982.
I do think it was quite revolutionary, since he is effectively proposing unlimited streaming of music at a fixed monthly cost:
The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.
Sure, technically, it might be obvious. But, within the traditions and economics of the music business, such a proposal was quite revolutionary in 1983.
Or in Zappa's words:
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 had to grin reading the word 'mega-hackers' ;))
Sure, but Zappa's not proposing to use a computer to playback the music. He's proposing a digital download of the music being transferred either onto analogue audio tape or digital tape.
> [People today] CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AUDIO AND BAD AUDIO . . . THEY CARE ABOUT THAT DIFFERENCE, AND THEY ARE WILLING TO GO TO SOME TROUBLE AND EXPENSE TO HAVE HIGH QUALITY 'PORTABLE AUDIO' TO USE AS 'WALLPAPER FOR THEIR LIFESTYLE'.
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.
(Also see "hardcore dubstep connoisseurs bagging on Skrillex for making a version that can be heard on crappy gear".)
Things have changed since 1983. Back then people did know the difference. It was stilll an analog world and only the very beginning of digital recording.
People today _don't_ know the difference because the first thing they hear is lossy, loud digital, not acetate, vinyl or cassette. But if they were raised on analog, you can bet they would hear the difference.
Yes, this is partially my point. IF ONLY YOU KNEW, FRANK. Isn't he so cute thinking that high-quality reproduction will be a thing the average consumer will be clamoring for in the future?
