The end of physical media is neigh

I own 30 albums of didgeridoo...

The sound may be haunting indeed and rooted us through our listening body through the earth core...In a way which even the Wagner tuba is not able to because the circular breathing make it more an event of Nature than a discontinuous playing score with an instrument...

I know that’s not the whole story. The didgeridoo is at least 1,000 years old and is capable of such a variety of sounds, I cannot imagine how music for it can be written as a score. It is played using "circular breathing" where the mouth breathes out while the nose breathes in, The drone effect is modulated by the player "talking", which can sound percussive. For real percussion, it can be beaten with sticks! Magical

My point was about the nature of ownership in a digitally controlled world. Say your $80,000 Tesla had an overnight update. When you wake up in the morning, your car is not quite the same car you parked the night before. Yes, updates are usually improvements, so no worries, owners are happy.

Yet you can imagine a Tesla determining that its driver is excessively spirited, so it engages valet mode and automatically throttles speed to the posted limit? For a week? A month? It certainly has all the tech onboard to do just that.

What if, say, you ran a traffic light and your car reported you to the authorities (in addition to limiting your speed to 25 mph and restricting your sound system to NPR)?

What if authorities required Tesla to report you?

After all, it would improve public safety.

After after all, it is your car, as evidenced by the fact that you paid $80,000 for it.

That’s a ways from digital music files to be sure, but the question of the meaning of ownership runs through both.

I understand no one can reach into the NAS in your home office and delete files, at least not practically. On the other hand, local storage is being supplanted by cloud storage, where your music files are totally within reach. Glad I said "conceivably" though :)

Having said that, It is a wonderful new world, no doubt! I totally agree there

I think you had a very good point indeed...

Soon it will be impossible to break the "law"...

We will be slave in a controlled hive...

Ownership illegal or legal will be permitted or not if the TBTP want it ...

My point was about the nature of ownership in a digitally controlled world.

I understand no one can reach into the NAS in your home office and delete files, at least not practically.

It will be possible very soon...

@bolong ,

I know, that’s why I wrote that. Clever on your part by the way...

This thread has focused on the perceived benefits and risks of the change in the music and movie industry business practice from physical media to digital streaming.   However, in his original post @erik_squires stated “With the advent of machine learning and AI controlling our music listening we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture”.  I can take Eric’s statement two ways. First, the statement’s direct meaning is that machine learning controls what we listen to.  I do not see this 1984-esque statement as fact.  Machine learning and AI generates recommended content based on your history and generates revenue for the streaming services by the sale of your history to those interested commercially.  Let’s not debate the ethics of the latter.  I can also take the statement to mean machine learning and AI can and will be used to create content without the musician or actor, having an effect on culture. I responded in my original post as to what I feel are the dangers to the human, artistic nature of music and theater.  To repeat, I feel we will loose the emotion, soul, and spontaneity with deep fakes that use an algorithm to homogenizes input of all past performances.  I feel it is a sad future state of for the human expression of the art.

 @erik_squires What was your meaning of the statement?

Others: Do you have an opinion on machine learning and AI replacing musicians and actors in the generation of new content? … and its effect on culture.