How many will listen to tape and vinyl in the next century?

This may not be the jesting question you could suppose.  I presently live in Milan Township, OH.  For those of you who don't recognize that name, it's the birthplace of Thomas Edison.  Guess how many 100+ year old Edison cylinders are still played here on the old players?  Not to mention 78s on the Victrolas.  And then there are the hundreds of pilgrims every month who keep the antique shops running strong buying it all.

I submit that analog recordings scribed on cylinders and disks will long outlast magnetic and optical media be they encoded via analog or digital processes. Well into the 22nd century and likely beyond, IMO.  Sound quality is not the primary concern of forecast longevity; the medium itself is simply more physically durable and the recording that survives is the one that will get listened to.  Optical technologies are damaged by UV, magnetic by EM, cloud by UV, EM and RF.  Those are far more prevalent than mechanical friction or shock with respect to damaging artifacts.  Even submersion or mold do not have insurmountable effects on analog cylinder/disk technology.  Just ask the Library of Congress.

FWIW, I also strongly suspect that at least some of us participating in these forums now will see the 200th anniversary of the phonographic recording in 2077.  Such is the nature of progress, no?

I'll still be listening to cassettes on my Nakamichi cassette decks (RX-505, ZX-9) in 2100, as long as Willy Hermann is still around to service them

Next century?  As in 2116?  If the Zombie Apocalypse hasn't occurred by then most likely some exotic new technology we can not even phantom will have displaced those technologies......

inna OP2,272 posts08-16-2016 7:08pmLet's hope you are right. My immediate concern is that people themselves tend to become sort of digital, unnatural and consisting of bits and pieces.

I completely agree with you Inna. I realized that I started to quantisize myself to a number of bits per instruction my brain generates. I believe I'm very close to Neo or Agent Smith.

After 100 years the main problem will be to find high quality original pressings. Most reissues are average sounding and they may not be able to carry the game of analog forward. We need seriously good sounding vinyls in plenty numbers in order to keep the interest going. 

Even today if we had to live off only the reissues a lot of us would lose interest in analog playback IMO