Remember when you would actually buy your albums? Remember when the only way to get a free song was for a single on the radio or on music video countdowns? Otherwise, you were going to your local Walmart or Best Buy to buy the CD or hopping on iTunes to put it on your iPod. In 2026, that feels like a totally different world. Nowadays, we have Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube, and many other options to stream music instead. Despite all the drastic differences, there was one man who saw all of this coming ahead of time: Jay-Z.
In a 2010 conversation with Interview Magazine, Hov and journalist Elvis Mitchell bonded over the gradual decline of record stores at the time. However, the difference is that the Blueprint rapper had quietly forecasted the shift over time.
“It’s horrible,” Jay-Z said. “I mean, you didn’t foresee this specifically, but you knew something would happen because whenever people reject change, things change for them anyhow. I think that’s what happened to the record business when Napster came around. The industry rejected what was happening instead of accepting it as change. Here we are today, more than a decade later, and we still haven’t figured it out.”
Jay-Z Explains How the Internet Was Bound To Take Over the Music Industry
Mitchell suggested that, at the very least, fans were still hungering for great music. Since “Empire State Of Mind” became such a smash hit for Jay, perhaps the state of music was okay. However, the artist born Shawn Carter suggested that fans were always going to want new music. Instead, how they were accessing music was a lot different with platforms like Napster.
Eventually, Napster would lay the groundwork for Jay-Z and his own streaming platform, Tidal. Similarly, Apple Music and Spotify became giants in the game. After a while, Hov said the industry just had to catch up so they could make money off of it. Ultimately, he said it was only a matter of time until everyone was on the same page.
“Well, I don’t think the appetite is the problem. I think the consumption of music is at an all-time high. But I think the ways that record companies are trying to monetize it is just all over the place. At the end of the day, music is in the clouds. That’s where it’s at now,” Jay-Z explained. “Before, you could hold it, look at it, turn it around. Now, it’s just in the air. That’s where it’s gonna wind up. You won’t need a shelf or a wall unit like my mom and pop had with all these big-ass records. You’ll just need your phone to call it up.”
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