[QUOTE=elmwood]
I pass by the occasional store in ghetto-like neighborhoods where signs proudly proclaim “BEEPER SALES”.
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I’ve heard that hookers and drug dealers still use beepers quite often. (I have no experience with either, but a former coworker claimed to know of such things.) It makes sense, if you think about it: beepers are probably pretty cheap, because they’re obsolete technology. So, if the owner needs to get rid of the beeper in a hurry, it’s no big financial loss.
I don’t know of any big music stores in the Detroit area, either. There are small independent places (that all look like they’re one bad week away from going under) and then there’s places like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. I know I haven’t bought an album in years. I buy my music on Napster, or occasionally from other online music stores. I then burn the songs to CDs, so I have backups in case my computer crashes or something. As a bonus, I only have to buy the songs I want, and not buy a CD with one or two good songs, and a dozen crappy filler songs.
I think physical albums (be they on LPs, cassettes, CDs, or whatever other media) are on the way out. Music is going to become almost exclusively single songs. Much like it was on the “old days,” when records contained one hit song, plus a “B-side.” Except there won’t be a B-side or a record, you’ll just plunk down a dollar to download David Cook’s latest hit song.
[QUOTE=Diceman]
I think physical albums (be they on LPs, cassettes, CDs, or whatever other media) are on the way out.
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That will never happen. There will always be someone willing to put out music in physical form, even if only for nostalgia’s sake. Even today, people are still releasing vinyl.
[QUOTE=Diceman]
Music is going to become almost exclusively single songs. Much like it was on the “old days,” when records contained one hit song, plus a “B-side.” Except there won’t be a B-side or a record, you’ll just plunk down a dollar to download David Cook’s latest hit song.
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Nah, that won’t happen (as an exclusive entity) as long as there are still artists who care about filling their albums with all good songs, and do. There are plenty of artists like that and always will be. The people who only want the mainstream hits will buy what they want, and the people who want full albums by their favorite artists will buy what they want. That’s how it’s always been and it won’t change.
[QUOTE=Philster]
I think Realtors/Real Estate agents are going to be obsolete within my lifetime.
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Why? Will people stop living in houses? Or do you think that the world will go Communistic on the issue of living space?
As long as there’s something to sell, you’re going to need people to sell it. Yeah, the internet is great for showing one what is available, but as long as there is a need to look, see, touch, and be cajoled, it’s never going to replace real estate agents. Or car salesmen, or retail stores, etc etc etc. This is doubly-true on big ticket items like a house.
[QUOTE=Diceman]
I don’t know of any big music stores in the Detroit area, either. There are small independent places (that all look like they’re one bad week away from going under) and then there’s places like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. I know I haven’t bought an album in years. I buy my music on Napster, or occasionally from other online music stores. I then burn the songs to CDs, so I have backups in case my computer crashes or something. As a bonus, I only have to buy the songs I want, and not buy a CD with one or two good songs, and a dozen crappy filler songs.
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I don’t buy any albums that have “filler songs”. I suppose they’re more common in terrible industry-promoted CDs.
No, CDs are going to continue to be sold for quite a while in one place - at the concert. Every CD I’ve bought in the last few years has been directly from a singer, band or their assistant at a concert. Which I then get autographed. I get music plus a unique souvenir of the occasion. And the artist gets a much greater percentage of the sale price then they would if it was sold through any retailer. I’ve seen plenty of shows where the musicians made far more money from CD sales than from the venue.
[QUOTE=JohnT]
Why? Will people stop living in houses? Or do you think that the world will go Communistic on the issue of living space?
As long as there’s something to sell, you’re going to need people to sell it. Yeah, the internet is great for showing one what is available, but as long as there is a need to look, see, touch, and be cajoled, it’s never going to replace real estate agents. Or car salesmen, or retail stores, etc etc etc. This is doubly-true on big ticket items like a house.
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Agreed, but the days of percentage-based commissions and high incomes for heavy sellers will be gone. The value add of real estate agents is nowhere near $30K on a $500K house sale, yet 6% was (is?) the going rate across much of America.
Sanitary napkin belt manufactures. I doubt any person under 30 knows what a sanitary napkin belt is, let alone has used one. Adhesive pads were one of the best inventions in my lifetime.
[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
Uh, film keeps for a fairly long time: buy 400 images worth of film and you’re fixed for 8 years or so. Might want to get a second camera, too, but they’re likely cheap at the moment.
As for the OP: commercial fishing. People have been complaining for my entire lifetime that there aren’t enough fish to make it profitable any more, and that farmed fish and oil prices have eroded the market so much that you can’t even break even any longer. They’re not all gone yet, but I think open-sea commercial fishing won’t outlive me, except for a few desperate holdouts.
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And actually, in my garage, I’ve got a fan-fold print-out filing rack. (For racking fan-fold print-outs). But most of you wouldn’t recognize that if you saw it. Of course, the paper format, and the impact printers, are both gone now.
Huh? A search for “filing cabinet” on Amazon returns over 10,000 results. To the best of my knowledge, many offices still generate enormous volumes of paper files, and need to keep them organized.
Here in the U.S., impact / dot-matrix printers – and fan-fold paper – aren’t quite extinct. They are still hanging on in certain industries, where being able to print multi-part forms is needed (e.g., auto repair, auto rental, manufacturing, logistics, etc.). Heck, Epson still makes new ones!
While landline residential phones have been dead or dying for a while now office phones are following suit. Our company this week removed about 1,000 from our location. Everybody keeps their same phone number but now you get a wireless or wired headset and run it through your laptop.
Yes, we’ve had VoIP forever. But they just recently removed all the Cisco phone units. You want to make a call you put on the headset and dial through TEAMS.
Business, maybe. At my old government job VoIP only appeared around 2024 and that was 100% because local thieves kept repeatedly cutting the copper wire to sell. Even then it might not have happened except a jurisdictional issue over wire crossing a rail line gave the phone company a flimsy excuse to delay repairs for literally a year (they had been spending tons on labor and copper repeatedly replacing lines every week) while we just used cell phones, until finally my agency caved and went VoIP.
At least one idiot managed to electrocute himself in a vault while stealing wire just blocks from us. It was epidemic until a local recycling facility got busted with a lot full of stolen catalytic converters and hundreds of pounds of copper wire. Then it moved on.
Forgive me if someone else has made this point (I haven’t read any further in this thing yet), but there continues to be a small but real market for buggy whips. A good friend drives a singe-horse cart for pleasure and in competition and has more than one; there are driving competitions for single, pairs, four-in-hand at all levels from pleasure hobby to international Grand-Prix levels. Buggy whip manufacturers also make a variety of other whips and crops for equestrians. Yes, it’s a niche market but it’s definitely not moribund. The equine industry as a whole, in all its aspects, has a multi-billion-dollar impact on the U.S. economy alone.
I 1976, in Zürich on Rämistrasse near both the Uni and the ETH, was a store with a display of magnificent display of very fancy, but very expensive slide rules in the window. I knew, and the owner must have known, that no one was going to buy any of them. I was tempted to go in and offer SFr 20 for one of them, but didn’t.
