Welcome to the Future

Welcome to the Future

On the eve of NewMusicBox’s 10th anniversary, we invited eight people to roll up their sleeves, dust off their magic eight balls, and offer their thoughts on where we’re coming from and (hopefully?) where we may be headed.

Written By

NewMusicBox Staff

Recording. Performance. Distribution. Copyright. Publishing. When the most basic terms of your field are in flux, it can be hard to see to next month, let alone into the next year, or to prepare for the next decade. Would you have expected music to be where it is today if you had been asked in 1999?

When NewMusicBox launched, it did so both in response to the shrinking space devoted to music in the mainstream media and in order to harness the opportunities presented by ever-expanding internet technologies. In ten years, this magazine has presented thousands of pages of interviews and articles, created audio and video materials offering insight into a wide swath of America’s music and its creators, and served as host to a community of readers eager to add their voices to the dialog.

But music, as well as the online landscape we increasingly rely upon to interact with it, continues to shift beneath our feet. We can guess where we’re headed, we can hope for certain results, we can prepare for imagined difficulties, but what if we could plan for an ideal outcome? On the eve of NewMusicBox’s 10th anniversary, we invited eight people to roll up their sleeves, dust off their magic eight balls, and offer their thoughts on where we’re coming from and (hopefully?) where we may be headed. —MS
Amanda MacBlane: On the Future of Music and Technology
George E. Lewis: a new sonic sociality
John Luther Adams: We Become Ocean
David Kusek: Success You Can Bank On
Richard Gottehrer: Technology Triggers Change
Missy Mazzoli: A Radical Opening Up
Mike Vernusky: Embodying the Future of New Music
Steven Stucky: The End of History