modern music technology is the result of decades of research and experimentation using constantly evolving tools to record and manipulate sound.

before recorded sound

• music had to be heard during live performances.

• concert halls were built to amplify sound.

the early days

• early sound pioneers tried many different ways to record sound.

• the first successful device to record sound was Thomas Edison’s Phonograph

  • the device used a cylinder with wax on it to capture sound vibrations through a horn.

  • the first song ever recorded was “Mary Had A Little Lamb”

after the phonograph

• sound technology progresses quickly. the vinyl to the iPod was only 80 years.

vinyl records

• records were developed by RCA Victor, an electronics and radio company started by Thomas Edison.

• records enjoyed decades of popularity-

  • the decline after the CD is introduced in the ‘80s.

  • huge resurgence in the past few years

• vinyl records use a small needle that vibrates when it touches the groves of a record. The vibrations are turned into sound through amplification. Back in the day, the metal needle against the plastic vinyl could cause it to deteriorate. Today, the material of records is stronger and takes longer to damage.

8-track tapes

• magnetic tape recording technology

• developed in the 1960s

• popular for about 20 years into the 1980s

• uses an “endless loop” of tape that has either four or eight audio tracks

• development is spearheaded by auto companies

• popularity declined as the smaller compact cassette came to the market

cassette tape

• developed by Phillips in the 1960s- originally for speech dictation

• uses a magnetic tape that has two “sides” - different audio is played depending on which direction the tape is moving.

• tapes for music playback began to become popular in the late ‘70s

• boomboxes were a popular way to listen to tapes

• Sony initiated the personal music player market with their walkman in 1979

• a popular pastime in the ‘80s and ‘90s to make custom mixtapes for friends and family. you could also record music off the radio.

• the popularity of cassettes was strong into the early 2000s, they even saw a resurgence due to the Guardians of the Galaxy.

compact disc

• compact discs or CDs are the digital media storage solution to have mainstream success

• the CD is the evolved form of the Laser Disc

• co-developed by Phillips and Sony and released in 1982

• since the CD is a digital type of media, we can talk about storage in computer memory, not time.

  • the typical CD can hold about 700MB (megabytes) of data.

  • to get the music to fit on the CD the audio quality was cut down significantly

• a typical audio CD can hold 10-15 songs

• the first commercial CDs were released on October 1st, 1982 in Japan, followed by Europe and the US two years later.

• They included classical recordings and pop music from Journey, Billy Joel, and Simon and Garfunkel

• CDs can be played on a wide variety of players

• just like cassette tapes, CDs can be used to make personalized mixed albums using blank CDs and a CD writer attached to a computer.

• the combination of writable CDs and early music illegal download programs like Napster and Limewire started a huge shift in the music industry due to privacy

digital music players

• digital media players play computer audio files of various types.

  • the most popular is the mp3 file type

• early digital media players debut on the market in the late 1990s. they had a small memory capacity - 34 - 64MB - about 6-12 songs.

• digital media players still exist today but have been overshadowed by streaming devices such as cell phones