Todd Rundgren is just one of those guys who can succeed at anything; the songwriter, singer, guitarist and producer can now add “psychic friend” to his business card.
Rolling Stone has unearthed a video interview with Rundgren from 1978 where the Philadelphian predicted the current media landscape. Rundgren has always been a technology guy—he wrote a song titled “I Hate My Frickin’ I.S.P” for a 2000 record and slipped references to his BlackBerry and email into “Not Tonight” by The New Cars. In the interview, Rundgren dismisses the then current tech of the “videodisc” as it is not an erasable media and suggests that in 25 years, every home will have a “resident computer in their home with a billion bytes of memory in it, and this will be standard.”
Rundgren states “The economic structure will shift itself. You’ll no longer go out and buy permanently recorded things, because, eventually, they do one of two things—they wear out, or you wear out. You get tired of them and don’t want them anymore.” Streaming services such as Spotify and Tidal allow users to listen to music without purchasing it from any home computer or their phone, so if it wears you out as Rundgren suggests, users can just click on another record. Of course, Rundgren was wrong in the fact that fans are probably still buying his albums on vinyl.