Coincidence?

I just recently purchased a stash of The Abso!ute Sound issues from previous years ('74 to '93) and am partaking in enjoying and reminiscing in the "style of the day", insightful wisdom, and old arguments.

Anyway, while reading an editorial letter by Pat Ramsey in the April 1984 issue (vol.9, no.33), I find an "ah ha" moment.

Mr Ramsey sais, "Despite our efforts to defend ourselves from the digital beast, I'm afraid we are doomed... The record company gods on hight, who see the digital encoding and pressings as the savior from lost revenue due to illegal bootlegging... ...high tech digital will stop this loss of revenue."

As we can see, historically speaking, Mr Ramsey is speaking of the 1984 impending CD replacement of Vinyl as being the standard of music playback and profitability. (and he is referring to unlicensed vinyl pressing as bootlegs)

I find this interesting because it reminds me as to our current day transition.

Today we see the industry pushing the new "computer audio" medium at us and, as it turns out, the record companies, again, find themselves in a revenue downturn. And again they have commented on the bootleg piracy, of course, now it's CDR piracy and MP3 piracy and so forth... Oh, and lets not forget that this new "computer audio" medium is a monumental "up grade" in sound quality -- kinda reminiscent of "perfect sound forever".

Coincidence???

What intent does the industry really have... perfecting music reproduction quality /or/ continuously selling to provide profitability ?

hmm...