By Futurist Thomas Frey
When Instruments Stop Being Tools and Become Interfaces
Musical instruments are dying—not disappearing, but transforming into something fundamentally different. The guitar, piano, drums, and saxophone that dominated music for centuries are becoming niche artifacts while new forms of musical expression emerge that our grandparents wouldn’t recognize as instruments at all.
This isn’t just about AI. It’s about the collision of AI composition, brain-computer interfaces, haptic feedback systems, spatial audio, and a generation that views music creation as software manipulation rather than physical performance. Let me show you what’s actually happening and why live music as we know it won’t survive the 2030s.
Continue reading… “The Death of the Guitar and the Rebirth of Music: What Instruments Become When AI Writes the Songs”