Think of your systems like music

I measure a lot of technology change by music. Growing up, years ago, there was nothing more satisfying than buying a vinyl record from a record shop. The smell and feel of the record; placing it on the turntable; listening to the songs in the order they were written; looking at the artwork of the cover … those were the days.

Of course, there were days gone by before. Albums were played at 33 rpm (revolutions per minute); singles at 45 rpm; and, in the old generation, gramophone records at 78 rpm.

I’m showing my age as, by the 1970s, we had music systems in cars that played cassettes. Cassette tapes. We also had reel-to-reel tape recorders for better quality. That was great, but still very basic.

I remember doing a concert in a club as a young man. We filmed the concert on Super8 cinecameras and reel-to-reel tapes. Ah, those were the days.

Then came the CD and DVD, the Compact Disc and Digital Versatile Disc. Music moved from 12” to less than 5”. Some say the quality was better, but many disagree. Maybe that’s why everyone has moved back to vinyl. In 2023 almost 50 million vinyl albums were sold in the USA, up by over 14 percent from the previous year and way up on a decade before.

Source: Vinyl sales in the USA 1993-2023 via Statista

Even then, there are other developments. A decade after the CD, there was downloading and the whole Napster thing. Suddenly, music was being made available for nothing and everyone hated it for breaching copyright and abusing artist and music label ownership.

So, Napster got shut down and was replaced by Apple iTunes, the official way to get music at 99 cents a record. But who wants to own a record? Let’s just stream it.

A few more years, and everything moved to Spotify. You can have as much music as you want for a $9.99 monthly subscription. Artists get paid a pittance, and music is everywhere, anytime, all of the time.

And next? Music in your head, streamed non-stop into your Apple Vision Air glasses whilst you walk into walls? Probably …

What’s this got to do with banking and fintech?

Well, an awful lot of banks are running systems that are vinyl whilst most fintech are streaming. Nothing wrong with vinyl – love the music and sound – but you can’t carry it around. It’s bulky, physical and old. Can you play Taylor Swift in your car on a record player?

This is the reason why people like me keep banging on about systems architecture, change, upgrade and refresh. When you think about music, it changes every decade. As a result, so should systems and systems architcutere. If you don’t do that, you’re just gonna be Johnny Rotten.