The Dizzying Changes of the Times - How Sound House is Trying to Keep Up with the World

In recent years, technological advances and evolution have been so rapid and drastic that, to be honest, I find it hard to keep up with all of it. Dial phones from the Showa Period, was followed by the pagers in the 1980’s, which only rang with a buzzer, and the introduction of those giant brick retro cell phones. Still, in the real world, telephones and faxes were the only main means of communication, but as computer technology advanced in the mid-1990s, people began to freely make full use of computers and send messages to anyone via email.

In fact, the appearance of this email has played a major role in the rapid progress of Sound House, which was founded in 1993 and started with nothing more than three telephones on an office desk. Putting out an advertisement which read, “Shockingly good prices!” brought quite an impact to the music industry, sales quickly grew and far exceeded my expectations, and then the company also quickly grew to be insanely busy. At that time there were only two or three employees, including part-timers, so I was left to manage the company by myself and was responsible for sales, engineering, customs clearance, overseas operations, accounting, and shouldering a lot of other tasks. I had so much to do that I was constantly working until my body was about to give out from working so much.With the emergence of email, the workflow of the company drastically changed forever.

The widespread use of email technology truly came out of the blue and has made work incredibly efficient. Instead of having to jot down notes and combine schedules to get whatever I need to get done, sending an email allows me to immediately do what needs to be done at that moment without having to write down what needs to be done. I could finish a request for anything and everything when I thought of it at that moment, instead of asking someone else to finish the task later. Also, I no longer have to rely on telephones and faxes to communicate with foreign countries. This is a dramatic evolution.

Since then the technological advances are endless: not only did email become commonplace with the widespread use of computers, but the Internet era soon followed. Sound House was one of the first in the music industry to launch a website in 1999, allowing customers to shop by simply placing items in an online shopping cart. Sales Operations initially used general software for sales management, but the program broke down frequently, so we finally decided to develop our own software, EMAX. Since then, I have been using this program which I was involved in the development and design of for 20 years now.

Just around that time, the old flip phones which became synonymous with Japanese cell phones, appeared in Japan. Ten years later, in 2009, cell phones transitioned into the era of smartphones. When I first saw a smartphone, I didn’t know what to make of it and I never thought that something like this would ever exist. But before long, this convenient tool became not only the most used form of communication infrastructure in the world, but it has also become an indispensable commodity for every person’s way of life and even children have one. I was born in an era when all we had was an abacus, and we finally got a digital calculator when I was in junior high school. I encountered my first desktop computer when I was in college, and then experiencing the cell phone age, but am I the only one who thinks that all of these technological changes are just too much?

In the 1960s when I was an elementary school student, black-and-white televisions began spreading throughout Japan and Japanese people were watching TV for about 2-3 hours a day. Television truly became a part of the social infrastructure and was a major source of information transmission. However, even though people loved TV so much, now more and more people aren’t watching TV anymore after more than half a century after its initial appearance. The spread of smartphones has led to the evolution of social networking services, allowing anyone to send and receive information around the world. As a result, rather than watching TV, people are trying to get the latest information via smartphones as fast as possible and watch whatever, whenever one wants. This would have been unthinkable decades ago. Nowadays, Japanese people spend an average of 2-3 hours a day on their smartphones, and it seems that the entire nation has become addicted to their smartphones. Using smartphones has become like an addictive drug, and the number of people looking at their smartphones not only at home, but also at school, on the train, and everywhere else they go has skyrocketed. There is no end to the use of smartphones while people are walking, and many people have become addicted to them.

I don’t think the age of the smartphone will last forever. Nowadays, it seems that if a person loses his smartphone, his life will be destroyed and he is not able to do anything. I often wonder if society should be this dependent on smartphones. In fact, there are many issues with this. For one, it’s such a hassle to have to type every single word into the phone, and although Siri can be used for voice input, it does not seem to fit in well with the Japanese customs. In addition, although there are many convenient functions, extreme use of smartphones has proven to be bad for one’s mental and physical health. We are finally entering the age of AI no sooner than worrying about where technological evolution has seemed to have reached its breaking point.

The evolution of AI can no longer be described with words. Just looking back on the past six months, we can see that society is continuing to undergo astronomical changes, and the degree of these changes seems to be accelerating. With the further advancement of AI, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and AI-generated fake information. The development of ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies is far beyond our imagination and it’s only a matter of time before AI surpasses human intelligence. It is no wonder, then, that AI’s databases contain endless data, hundreds of millions of times more information and knowledge than what is available to individual human beings. Also, with AI technology, not only can we generate all kinds of information, but we can also, for example, replace a person’s face and words to make it seem as if he or she is talking to us. It is now possible to create whatever we want to see, whatever we want to appear, whatever we want to create, whatever we want someone else to create, in other words, whatever information a human being could possibly imagine. In the near future, there will no doubt be robots whose sole purpose is to kill enemies in war. This is quite a frightening world we live in.

The advent of AI will cause sudden upheaval to the music industry. To begin with, many of the songs that are popular these days are already being written with the help of AI. In many cases, songs are written with AI intelligence, which knows what kind of songs will be a hit and what kind of lyrics will be liked. Musicians are becoming more and more dependent on AI to the point where songwriters may soon lose their jobs. At the same time, the field of sound production is also changing. It would be no exaggeration to say that it is changing radically. Until now, editing has been done manually and took a great deal of time and manpower using oversized consoles and many outboards as peripheral equipment, and sound engineers have made full use of various editing software and tools. I believe that such a world will soon disappear. Just as the abacus has become obsolete with the advent of the calculator, the rise of AI will probably lead to the disappearance of large-scale sound production studios. In short, we are approaching an age in which humans have had to work really hard and have stayed up all hours of the night to produce and edit, even if it’s bad for our health, will all be left to complete by AI.

Over the past 30 years or so, I have seen everything I have learned and worked so hard towards has been made obsolete through all of these technological advances. And now that trend is accelerating, and it seems as if my know-how, power, and talent will be replaced by AI. Then, this should mean that I will no longer have to work as hard. How will I spend all of this new leisure time? All of this is still an unknown world to me. This is because, until I get there, I will still have to spend several years in an era of endless changes and I will have to learn many things day by day, while still trying to stay afloat. Even if new technology or knowledge learned can be discarded at some point in an increasingly AI-oriented society. I must now absorb all the information I can get my hands on, and somehow still be able to look ahead. This is a painful task, but it is also my responsibility as the founder of Sound House. No, it is also the responsibility of society as a whole.

Just thinking about the coming year, I can no longer find the right words to express how I feel about all of this. Next year is going to be a staggering year. Wars will continue in many parts of the world and there are more predictions of major earthquakes happening in Japan. Disasters will break out in many parts of the world due to extreme weather due to global warming and the era of food shortages is fast approaching. The era of peace and splendor from the latter half of the Showa Period into the Heisei Period has come to an end, and we are now entering the era of the Latter Day of the Law, the era of AI that will conclude human history. Despite these seemingly frightening times, I am proud to be able to run Sound House in today’s social climate. Even with all of the widespread use of AI, we can still push back against all of these advances by carefully monitoring social trends,contributing to society through our work, and providing the best possible service to music lovers throughout Japan.

The bottom line is that even with the advancement of AI, I want to say that Sound House is still an indestructible force! That may be a false statement, but we have always made history with our own hands and through things that were built throughout the dawn of civilization. Sound House was also made by our own hands. With our passion and enthusiasm, we may be able to change history in some small way. No, I am sure we can. These are my thoughts moving forward to 2024. Even with these warp-speed moving times, Sound House will surely rewrite history, and I am happy to be a part of it.