HISTORY OF MUSIC DELIVERY SYSTEMS
*NOTE- The mode of music delivery has, in some cases, created social effects, but for the most
part it is the music itself that has had the most cultural impact. Some effects of both have been
addressed in this research, but it is a huge subject and, for our purposes, may be dependent on
the course of the script*
Audio Recording: History and Development
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“If you would be singing like this two thousand years ago, people would have stoned you.”
-Simon Cowell (American Idol)
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It started with just music. We beat on logs, and later skins, with a group of people listening. We
added tight strings or vibrations to put tones into the rhythm, all the while yelling our lungs out.
Music was live - there was no way to record it. You want some tunes, you either hired some
people to do it or you did it yourself.
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Written music was next. Some music got popular and people wanted to help it travel and
become better known. Notation was made and agreed upon. But even if you could read music
you might not have the skill to play like it. So, record someone else doing it.
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In 1857, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French printer living in Paris, invented the
earliest known sound recording device, the PhonoAutograph. He built a mechanical
reproduction of the human ear, collecting sounds through a horn attached to a membrane,
which vibrated a stylus which then etched an image on a hand cranked cylinder that was coated
with soot. However, the device only recorded a visual representation of sound; there was no
way to play back the sound it had recorded.
Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph, invented in 1877, used recording substrates of tinfoil, and
later, wax, which allowed for audio playback. Its close technological relatives and corporate
rivals, the Bell-Tainter graphophone and the Berliner gramophone, stood alone for several
decades as the dominant modern innovations in sound reproduction.
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In 1888, Emil Berliner discovered an easier method for recording – shellac based discs. This
new technology also enabled the mass-production of recordings. Berliner also created a player
for his discs, which was known as the Gramophone. Berliners discs were known as “78s”,
referring to the 78 revolutions-per-minute at which they played. These would be the standard
for many years.
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The rise in the 1920s of radio, electronic audio recording, and motion picture "talkies" began an
era in which records and the machines that played them would begin to develop within a much
more tangled web of audio technologies.
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The Recording Industry Rebounds
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“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.” -Ed Gardner (comic & actor)
From its beginning in the early 1920s until the Great Depression, radio broadcasting seemed to
alternate between serving as a perfect partner and as insurmountable competition for the
recording industry. With the Depression and the continuing rise of free live radio, the idea of
spending money on "canned" entertainment quickly lost its appeal. For a few years it seemed
that the legacy of the phonograph had been buried and replaced.
The industry did not begin to show signs of life again until 1934. The cautious corporate return
to recording was built on making records more affordable. Stiff competition in an uncertain
market kept prices down.
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In 1929 Italian opera great Arturo Toscanini had declared the current recording technology
unfit for great art. In 1936 he finally became satisfied that recent advances in quality had
redeemed the process and provided a symbolic boost to the industry's return when he agreed to
record for RCA Victor. Radio fueled a surge of interest in recorded classical music, mainly on
the strength of artists from Europe, where the industry decline had never been as pronounced or
seemingly terminal.
Meanwhile, the jukebox craze of the late 30s marked a major boom in the youth market.
Thirteen million records a year were sold just to fill the thousands of contraptions that provided
teenagers with a steady diet of Big Band swing from the likes of Benny Goodman, Tommy
Dorsey and Glenn Miller. The teens also enthusiastically collected their own copies of the
songs they danced to in diners and drugstores. In the early 1940s bobbysoxers screamed and
passed out at Frank Sinatra performances, popular vocalists like Doris Day and Perry Como
crooned sentimental love songs, and more records were sold than ever before.
As World War II began to unfold, however, shellac and other materials for making records
became scarce. Members of the powerful American Federation of Musicians union agreed to
stop recording any work that did not contribute to the war effort as of August, 1942, and the
record companies saw production grind to a halt for two years.
War of the Speeds
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“You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a
phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can
get Minnie.”
-Groucho Marx (A Night at the Opera)
The short playing time of 78 revolutions per minute (RPM) records meant that a 50-minute
symphony would be packaged in the brown paper sleeves of a five-disc leatherbound "album"
resembling the cover of photograph scrapbooks. This may be why people would later refer to
single disc LPs as albums.
RCA had already developed seven-inch single-song "45s," which were portable, stackable and
well-suited to easy mechanical manipulation in juke boxes. The resulting "war of the speeds"
forced consumers to either choose one size exclusively or buy two different record players. It
was finally Toscanini who convinced RCA head David Sarnoff to relent. When the dust settled
in 1951, both RCA and CBS manufactured both kinds of records and multi-speed record
players went into widespread production.
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Experiments with longer playing records that could allow for an uninterrupted listening
experience had been conducted since Edison's later years. Technologies developed during the
war sparked some key transformations in the late 1940s. Columbia Records' (owned by CBS)
Peter Goldmark finally perfected long-playing (LP) records that could play at 33 1/3 RPM for
over twenty minutes on each side in 1947. CBS executive William Paley joined Goldmark in
demonstrating the LP for RCA's David Sarnoff. A few days later, Sarnoff phoned Paley to say
that he had decided not to manufacture the new format. That would soon change.
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Hi Fi and Studio Tape Recording
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“We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different
directions.”
-Les Paul (guitarist & inventor of multi-track recording)
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The late 1940s also saw magnetic tape recording emerge as a viable method of sound
reproduction. The most important pioneering experiments in magnetic tape had been conducted
in Germany, starting in the late 1920s. By the mid 1930’s a "magnetophone" that recorded and
played on magnetic tape had been perfected. Like Edison phonographs, magnetic tape
recorders were first thought of as business dictation devices.
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The German BASF corporation developed tape technology that began to approach the
frequency range of records in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which they began to
demonstrate the advances by recording and playing music. It wasn't until the years during and
immediately following World War II that the U.S. found and appropriated German tape
recording technology. The 3M company (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) was the first
major American corporation to pioneer the development of high quality magnetic tape, and
Ampex began to produce viable professional tape recorders.
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In 1948 Bing Crosby, dissatisfied with conventional recording techniques, began to use the
3M-Ampex technologies. Magnetic tape was consequently established as a serious alternative
to direct recording onto wax or acetate. This technology soon became prevalent for Western
audio editing and multi-track recording on reel-to-reel devices.
During the postwar boom the superior quality of the new records sparked a surge in demand for
better equipment to play them on. Enthusiasts of high fidelity or "hi fi" equipment coaxed
superior amplifiers, sensitive pickups and powerful, separately enclosed speakers out of
expensive radio supply houses and into common retail outlets.
In 1949, high fidelity magnetic tape recording became the industry standard almost overnight.
Once the recording quality of tape matched and surpassed that of the old direct recording
process, its advantages became irresistible. Artists could sustain the momentum of a particular
performance without having to break every four minutes for a disc change. Seamless splice
editing allowed producers to include the best material from each of several takes in one final
product. The revolution in recording quality that magnetic tape represented added fuel to
audiophiles' obsession with new trends in quality improvement.
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ASCAP and BMI
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“Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.”
-John Lennon (musician)
In 1914 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was established
to protect recording artists from unsanctioned use of their material. ASCAP used a blanket
licensing agreement to collect a pre-set annual fee from anyone using its members' material for
any commercial purpose. The money was divided among ASCAP artists. As major players in
the radio industry became more interested in broadcasting recorded work, ASCAP reinforced
its control over distribution. Artists who were not ASCAP members had little hope of exposing
their work to wide audiences.
During the recording boom of the late 30s and early 40s, ASCAP had doubled the fees they
charged radio stations. In the midst of court battles and the dearth of music not protected by
ASCAP, frustrated broadcasters formed their own blanket licensing system, Broadcast Music,
Incorporated (BMI), in 1939. The BMI camp sought alternatives to ASCAP acts. In the process
BMI would later become the dominant force in the discovery and marketing of a new sound
that would breed a new culture.
Rock and Roll
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“I don’t know anything about music. In my line, you don’t have to.”
-Elvis Presley (King of Rock & Roll)
Rock and roll echoed the cross-pollination of black and white music cultures from the jazz age,
including the heights of passion expressed by both the youthful fans and the puritanical
detractors. This hybrid of country & western and rhythm & blues, what record industry insiders
categorized as "hillbilly" and "race," was first popularized by Bill Haley and the Comets in
1954.
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The moment this black music attracted these white musicians might well be one of the most
important moments in modern history. A whole culture started to pass from its most structured,
fearful years to an unpredictable and provocative age, in which both ultramodern and primitive
modes blended to become the mood of the time.
Record sales once again reached unprecedented heights, thanks to what the ASCAP camp
called "untalented twitchers and twisters whose appeal is largely to the zoot suiter and the
juvenile delinquent," who cranked out "obscene junk pretty much on a level with dirty comic
magazines." They also blamed "the current climate on radio and TV" for promoting the likes of
"Elvis Presley and his animal posturings..."
When Elvis hit the charts in 1956 there was no such thing as a "youth market." By 1957, almost
solely through the demand for his recordings, there was. It was a fundamental, structural
change in American society. In a few years people learned just how fundamental, as that
"market" revealed itself also to have qualities of a community, one that had the power to initiate
far-reaching social changes that seemed unimaginable in 1955. The antiwar movement, the
second wave of the civil rights movement, feminism, ecology, and the higher consciousness
movement...all got their impetus from the excitement of people who felt empowered because
they felt they were part of a national community of youth, a community that had first been
defined, and then often inspired, by its affinity for this music.
The explosive new youth market also prompted recording artist representatives to scramble for
radio air time. The term "payola," a blend of "payoff" and "Victrola," was coined to refer to
rising corruption in the music industry fueled by under-the-table fees paid to disc-jockys in
exchange for air play.
Stereo and Studio Production
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“I'd rather be a musician than a rock star.”
-George Harrison (somewhat famous musician)
In 1958 stereo records hit the market to a lukewarm reception. The process of recording two
separate channels onto adjacent tracks of the same tape continued to improve, however. By
1959 the added dimension of the stereo listening experience was quite compelling. Enthusiasts
upgraded their equipment and the recent mini boom in home reel-to-reel tape recordings died
down in the wake of stereo records.
Between rock and roll and the new wave of sophistication in recording techniques, studio
recording became much more than a way of simply reproducing live performances. As they
gained experience, producers began to bring technological skill and editorial precision to what
was becoming a new arena of artistic vision. Many of the early 1960s recording artists were
recruited by producers as mere ingredients in sophisticated mixing and processing strategies.
In 1967 the Beatles and George Martin collaborated on the most legendary breakthrough in the
aesthetic sophistication of studio production. “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” is
widely thought of as the first studio “concept” album. Its admirers experience it as a sustained
journey through a landscape of musical effects, moods and surreal imagery. Although John
Lennon wryly pointed to the lack of conceptual connection among the tracks on Sgt. Pepper,
the 700 studio hours that went into it crystallize as a masterwork that countless recording artists
are still trying to emulate.
After the Beatles the rock performer began to be seen not just as an entertainer but as a social
visionary, a cultural trendsetter, a questing, fashionable, representative of a new society--Beau
Brummell, William Blake, and Thomas Jefferson rolled into one and put on stage with an
electric guitar. The Beatles expanded the conception and scope of operations of pop music and
made rock and roll the centerpiece of an entire youthful culture.
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Cartridges and Cassettes
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“Listen Edith, I know you're singing, you know you're singing, but the neighbors may think I'm
torturing you.
- Archie Bunker (TV character)
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This new way of appreciating LPs contributed to a further decline in sales of 45s, which had
enjoyed 25% of the record market just after the "war of the speeds" (RCA claimed the figure
was closer to 50%), and unraveled to 7% by 1975. Meanwhile, recording industry executives
saw great promise in the concept of creating a magnetic tape delivery system that would not
involve manual threading and would be more portable than records. Philips marketed the first
encased audio tapes in 1964, and within a few years, eight-track cartridges emerged as the front
runner in a market that included four-tracks and cassettes. By 1966 many cars were outfitted
with eight-track stereo players that allowed listeners to access any of four different sections of
an LP on tape at the touch of a button.
Cassette tapes eventually won the battle, however. A robust market in blank and prerecorded
cassettes and cassette tape decks was established because of the less cumbersome size, the
advent in 1969 of Dolby Noise Reduction as an answer to the unpleasant hiss that limited
cassettes to the voice dictation market, and the possibility of consumers doing their own
recording. Eight-track tapes, like Edison phonograph cylinders and 78 RPM records before
them, were eventually relegated to the trash heap of antiquity. Cassette players took over
domination of the car sound system market, and in 1979 Sony's Walkman added further
flexibility and convenience to the enjoyment of cassette tapes.
Cassettes also sparked a revolution in recording piracy-- millions of people copied borrowed
records onto blank tapes and circulated "bootleg" recordings of concerts. Countries with loose
interpretations of or indifference to Western copyright law marketed cheap pirated cassette
versions of popular LPs. It is also important to note that both 8-tracks and cassettes were
playable in automobiles – the first step towards portable music.
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Digital Recording Technologies
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“If you wanted to torture me, you'd tie me down and force me to watch our first five videos.”
-Jon Bon Jovi (rock musician)
t lIt was also around this time that Thomas Stockham began recording digitally – the recorded
information was turned into a signal of digital, binary code, which greatly increased sound
quality a and minimized recording errors.
The piracy issue has provided the recording industry with major legal and technological
challenges since the advent of cassette tapes. By 1982 the computer revolution spawned a
strong answer to the challenges. Compact discs (CDs), on which master recordings are
converted to digital information, provided clear, superior resolution that cassette tape quality
couldn't match. They were the first widely available digital music delivery method, and
virtually replaced every other form of recording media. For the first few years vinyl record
purists claimed that CDs were sterile, lacking the "humanness" of random imperfections. These
voices died down, however, as CDs gradually and irreversibly permeated the market.
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As video tape recording reached its stride in the 1980s, Sony took the lead in efforts to combine
the helical-scan recording technology used for video signals with the latest in audio recording.
The result was the introduction in 1987 of Digital Audio Tapes (DAT) and DAT recorders to the
semi-professional and professional recording studio market. By 1992, 80 percent of recording
studios made use of a DAT machine.
For a while, several formats, each with its own advantages, managed to survive together. Audio
cassettes secured a key ongoing niche in the recording market. Their quality gradually
approached that of CDs, they were clearly the least expensive way to acquire and play music,
and their use in cars and mini-headphone systems like the Walkman undercut pricier, motionsensitive CD systems. Meanwhile, CDs dominated sales of prerecorded music, DAT machines
broke the "under $1000" barrier and sparked broader consumer interest, and recordable Mini
Discs (MD) and Digital Compact Cassettes (DCC) were marketed by Sony and Philips,
respectively.
The market viability of DCCs and MDs did not last long. Public familiarity with the history of
new formats that may or may not endure led to increasing consumer hesitation to embrace new
technologies as they are first introduced. The introduction of recordable video discs and "CD+"
or "CD enhanced" products to the market made consumer caution about DCCs and MDs all the
more understandable.
CD+ was a format that provided high quality CD sound on a regular CD player, but also
provided listeners with interactive opportunities to experiment with varying mixes and learn
more about the artists' creative process when they used the product as CD Rom software on a
multimedia computer. Major corporate players in the CD+ and recordable video disc markets
(such as Sony, Toshiba, and Philips) came to agreements on industry standard formats in
advance, attempting to avoid the headaches associated with format conflicts of the past: the
"war of the speeds," cassettes vs. eight-tracks, and Beta vs. VHS.
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Mixing It Up: Recording Culture in the 1990s and Beyond
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“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right
time and the instrument will play itself.”
-Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)
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Compact discs remained the standard until around 1994, when individual MP3 files, which
were essentially the electronic music file on a CD, became the preferred delivery system for
music, making it more portable and transferrable than ever before.
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By 2005, there were more than 40 million MP3 players in use. By 2009, it was estimated that
more than $1 billion had been spent on on-line music purchasing and another half-billion
dollars on music downloaded via cellular phones.
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In 2011, the music industry announced that they would be phasing out CDs as a viable music
delivery system.
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If digital recording technology is igniting a revolution comparable in scope to the one sparked
by rock and roll, it is certainly a quieter, more interior revolution. Rock and roll helped fuel a
generational and cultural rupture of unprecedented proportions. Recent advances in digital
technologies, on the other hand, help to blur old distinctions, especially those between audio
and visual artistic genres and between artist and audience, producer and consumer.
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) and digital sequencing technologies allow solitary
musicians to draw on a full spectrum of instruments simultaneously, and remove musical
sophistication as a requirement for producing technically sophisticated sound. Rap music
highlights the increased use of appropriated and re-contextualized audio material, which is
facilitated by digital sampling. Interactive multimedia gives listeners the ability to design their
own versions of a recording.
For the major marketplace, MTV firmly established the commercial interdependence of music,
dance, film, and computer graphics. Multimedia production tools are increasingly easy to
access and use, and since both audio and video information can be stored and processed
digitally, mixing them becomes more seamlessly natural. Desktop artists and hobbyists of
moderate means can now manipulate digital material with the same technical precision that
recently required expensive studio equipment and substantially more time. Internet enthusiasts
on different continents can collaborate on multimedia creations.
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Finally, For The Record….
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“You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly”
-Hank Williams (somewhat famous musician)
Even the cultural polarization that characterized the early years of rock and roll was prompted
by the fusion of what had been separate worlds: black and white, blues and country, "hillbilly"
and "race." The history of recording has been a history of merging cultures, technologies and
sensory experiences. Often enough in this ongoing blending process, blazing moments of
creativity are stirred into a standardized commercial stew, made blandly agreeable to a lowest
common demographic. At times, though, these collisions can clear a view to something in the
social and artistic air previously inconceivable, fresh and overwhelming-- something we can, at
times, see as a revolution.
But, in the end, it all comes back to live music, People still get music from around the world
delivered through wires, or tubes, or…whatever, so that they can try to recreate it in their
garage by beating on logs and skins and making strings vibrate while yelling at the top of their
lungs. How far we’ve come.
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