Anyway, the story was buried\u00a0 in between the pictures of million dollar studios and ads for the equipment featured in those studios.\u00a0 The piece wasn’t listed on the cover, or even pushed to the back page as a final statement.\u00a0 Borrowing the title of an older REM song, “The End of World as We Know it”, it was hidden in plain sight on page 26.<\/p>\n
“The advent of the World Wide Web marks the beginning of a new era, an era of shared knowledge and distributed computing.\u00a0 Every day, billions of bytes of data are donated to online archives around the world.\u00a0 It is not unreasonable to assume that nearly the whole of human knowledge will one day reside on networked computers.”\u00a0 They go on to say, “The most popular service providers are Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online…most providers allow Internet access, and recently, some providers have added Web access; several have even provided the ability for individual users to create their own Web pages.”\u00a0 The authors\u00a0recommended using dial-up speeds of al least 14.4 kbps because “the relatively large\u00a0file sizes would preclude slower connections”.<\/p>\n “One of the most dramatic changes engendered by the Web may be the dwindling role of the record companies themselves.\u00a0 The Internet will spawn an online independent music industry in which the Web-savvy musician will no longer have to compete for the attention of a record company to disseminate music.”\u00a0\u00a0Given the prior comments, their final paragraph\u00a0would have\u00a0seemed really over the top for 1995. \u00a0“The world has changed; to compete and participate, each of us must change as well.\u00a0 The sword has been withdrawn from its sheath; the blade glitters in the flickering light.\u00a0 Position the sword carefully.\u00a0 Now, fall upon it.\u00a0 Your re-birth awaits you.”<\/p>\n Among the many\u00a0ads in this issue\u00a0for now-defunct products and companies\u00a0was a turnkey, computer recording system that boasted a 17″ CRT monitor…for the “unbeatable price” of $9,995.00.\u00a0 Ouch!<\/p>\n The\u00a0music industry had begun to think of itself as an institution.\u00a0 They made the rules.\u00a0 They told us what music to like, what music to listen to, and what music to buy.\u00a0 What… do\u00a0you think it was the\u00a0independent-minded\u00a0college\u00a0radio DJ’s that discovered “the next big thing?”\u00a0 Those stations were actively marketed to by major label subsidiaries.\u00a0\u00a0 The music industry was clearly\u00a0in the drivers seat.\u00a0\u00a0Sales\u00a0were steadily rising, and by 1999, they would report all-time-high\u00a0revenues\u00a0of\u00a014.6 billion dollars.\u00a0 How could they go wrong?\u00a0 What a lesson!\u00a0 As business owners, we need to be careful not to tell our customers what they want.<\/p>\n![\"MIX](\"http:\/\/www.mudhutstudiosonline.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/MIX-1995.jpg\")
<\/a>I was a subscriber to MIX<\/a> magazine for about a decade\u00a0beginning in the mid nineties.\u00a0 At that time, MIX was generally accepted as the premiere industry magazine for recording and sound-for-film studios.\u00a0 I remembered this article\u00a0from one of the issues\u00a0(Ken C. Puhlmann and David G. Lampton,”The End of the World as We Know It,” MIX\u00a0<\/span> October, 1995, pp. 26-31, p 352)\u00a0<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0The authors did an excellent job of laying out the possible future for the audio industry.<\/p>\n