Frank Zappa Invented Music Streaming
A fascinating look into how Zappa was thinking about getting his music to his audience.
Zappa’s pitch addressed all of these concerns by proposing to store the best of the labels’ catalogs “in a central processing location, and hav[ing] them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user’s home taping appliances.” Yep: Prior even to home computers, Zappa envisioned a server full of music ready to move down your phone or television cable.
He even envisioned both the subscription model (royalty payments and consumer billing were “built into the software of the system”) and a very Pandora-like option of “special interest categories.”
Read the whole thing, you’ll laugh and smile!
LGF reader “Slap” informed me of a link to the text of Zappa’s proposal. Click here for the text.