The Future of Digital Music...Maybe

Illustration: Janne Iivonen

I’ve quickly grown accustomed to having instantaneous access to the entirety of human knowledge pretty much anywhere and at any time (otherwise known as googling from a smartphone). But you know what feature of the magical unfolding digital future really blows me away? The fact that, in my house, I can say “Alexa, play Led Zeppelin,” and start irritating my children within seconds.

Alexa is the pleasant personality baked into Amazon’s Echo Bluetooth speaker; she’s staring at me right now from the kitchen table, breathlessly listening for her name. Google just announced a similar product called Home, and Apple’s Siri can pull this off, as well. Being able to play whatever music I want without having to fiddle with buttons is a neat party trick, sure, but I can’t help feeling it’s the beginning of something much bigger.

Alexa, play the Beatles’ “Revolution.”

Artificial intelligence seems to be getting scary good scary fast. Just a few years back, I was mocking Siri’s ineptitude; today she’s a trusted advisor and life coach, and I’m considering giving her power of attorney over all my decision making. You don’t have to be a futurist to see that, not too long from now, the same voice-controlled AI that allows me to sonically torture my children will seep into the objects all around us—even the most mundane ones. “Umbrella, am I going to need you tomorrow morning? Oh, and oven, you can take the night off—just order me a large pepperoni pizza.” (In 2015, Dacor actually announced a plan to integrate voice-control into its flagship oven, but the feature has yet to appear.)

As deep and scintillating as I’m sure conversations with my appliances will be, I’d rather have them shut up and play the music: whatever I want, wherever I am, right at that moment. When I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll say to my toaster, “Take me through some mellow ’70s classics, but heavy up on Bob Seger—and absolutely no Chicago.” If I’m worried I’m falling out of touch with my kids, I’ll be able to catch up during my commute: “Hey, subway seat, play me the current Top Ten song that people my age hate the least.”

This will be an even bigger deal than what Alexa and her ilk can do now, especially for those of us who grew up in a Flintstones world, where listening to music literally meant scratching a tiny rock across a vinyl disc. (Pause for millennial laughter to subside.) It seems like only yesterday we had to fetch an album out of a stack on a shelf and play it on a specialized turning table—cleverly called a “turntable”—stored inside a dedicated Stereo Cabinet. You had to add a nickel for weight if the diamond stylus was bouncing and popping too much; by the time you got it all rolling, it was usually time for bed.

Not so in this bold new song-filled future. At some point, it won’t even be necessary to speak your request aloud—the system will guess what you want. I imagine a jogging path that’ll just start playing my favorite Christian-ska-death-metal-fusion playlist as I run, smartly adjusting to my biofeedback (provided by my virtual-reality-enabled megahoodie, or some damn thing) so the songs wax and wane in intensity along with my heart rate.

Just the right music will pop up everywhere. You’ll hear a triumphal march after you nail that job interview, a tender love song when you’re apologizing. I imagine it’ll be like living in a musical, where any emotionally charged situation, like old lovers meeting on the street, will start the music flowing, and everyone will drop what they’re doing and start singing and dancing and splashing through puddles. And then, annoyed by all this audible cheerfulness, a pack of emo kids will swarm out of a back alley in a sea of black, accompanied by a dark storm of songs about their pain...

It won’t all be “Singin’ In The Rain,” I’m sure. My fun, music-fueled backyard barbecue could devolve into an audio turf war, with the teenagers trying to out-shout the adults and take over the deejaying. I’d consider bribing benevolent hackers to program the space around me so that if anyone within earshot requests, “Play Justin Bieber,” a voice will smoothly reply, “Why?”

But for now, I’m having lots of localized fun with my Echo—calling out for “Waitin’ On A Friend” while the mac ’n’ cheese water is coming to a boil—and I’m looking forward to having this superpower available to me everywhere, not only when I’m within the range of one gadget.

So hop to it, engineers—please bring this beautiful vision to life. Alexa, play “Let’s Get This Party Started.” And remember—no Chicago.