Thesis Paper Music isn’t something that started recently in the twentieth century; it is something that has been around for several centuries. Throughout our lifetime technology has been changing at a rapid pace and so has music. Different genres and styles of music have been evolving and this is not only due to the taste of the listeners; technology plays a big role in the evolution of music. Music wouldn’t be the way it is today if it weren’t for the improvement of technology throughout the past couple of decades.
Prior to 1877, there was no way to record music. If one wanted to hear some USIA before 1877, the music would have to be listened to or played in person. Music was far from a convenience in the mid sass’s due to the fact that there was no way to record music. Today music is at our fingertips whenever and wherever we want to listen to it. The convenience of music for us today kicked off in 1877 with the first ever recording of the human voice. “While experimenting with a new telegraph device, Thomas Edison stumbles upon the beginnings of recorded sound.
By the end of the year, he records “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on the first working phonograph, coming the first inventor to successfully record the human voice” (Taint). With the phonograph Thomas Edison started the ball rolling for new and improved inventions in the technology world that support the improvement of the music industry. “By 1885, rival investors Chester Bell and Charles Tainted challenge Edition’s phonograph with their “gramophone” (Taint). Competition pushes people to always strive to improve; whether it is on their musical talent or on the improvement on technology and having the most up-to-date piece of technology.
As result of Edition’s rivals coming out with the gramophone, he “responds in 1887 with a phonograph that utilizes a battery-driven motor, which produces a constant pitch the original hand crank can’t match” (Taint). If it weren’t for these inventions, musicians wouldn’t have the ability to record their own music. The phonograph and the gramophone made it possible for families to have recordings of professionals singing songs they enjoy rather than them having to sing the songs by themselves.
Inventions such as the gramophone and the phonograph were important pieces f technology to the music industry, however in 1888 the invention of the gramophone was even more impressive and had an even bigger impact on the music industry. “In 1888, Mile Berliner invents the gramophone, which uses a disc rather than a cylinder as the recording medium… Grooves in the exposed zinc become a negative stamp that allows Berliner to mass-produce discs in balkanized rubber” (Taint). These seven inch discs were huge to the music industry.
For the first time ever artists were able to record a two minute recording of their songs for schoolhouse all over the country. Now not only can musicians make money off of singing concerts for people in person, but they can also produce recordings on the gramophone and sell those to people all over the country because the discs were able to be mass produced. Despite the improvements in technology for music, the Music Thesis Paper By reciprocal “The popularity of the fairground Jukeboxes allows Columbia Gramophone Company… O become the only gramophone leasing company to turn a profit” (Taint). Jukeboxes are surprisingly still around today, for example in the Tom Walls. The only problem Jukeboxes faced was the impossibility of mass-producing them and shipping them around the country because of how big they were. The late sass’s and the sass’s were major decades for the music industry thanks to the improvement of technology. Artists were able to mass produce two minute copies of their songs all over the country thanks to Berliners invention of the new way to record music onto seven inch discs.
Due to improvements in technology, “at the turn of the century, developments in the materials and the production techniques of both the disc and cylinder give according a more clear, strong, and dynamic sound” (Taint). Not only did the discs and cylinders improve in quality, they improvement of mass production also was important and as a result of the technology improving, the automatic music business took off. As we know today copyright infringement is a relevant a problem with limier, and other websites like that.
However copyright infringement didn’t start with music on the internet; it actually started back in the early sass’s with copyright infringements with the discs and cylinders. “Congress eventually passes a law squiring a royalty paid to the publishers for each mechanically reproduced song” (Taint). Even though people are able to now make copies of music illegally, the music industry still took off in the early sass’s due to the improvement in technology and the ability of artists to record their songs and mass produce them across the country. Broadcasts of musicians was unheard of prior to the sass’s.
However in the sass’s “the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) begins mass-producing commercial radios. KODAK in Pittsburgh, Pa. Becomes the first commercial radio station to receive call teeters and begins regular broadcasts by announcing the returns of the presidential election” (Taint). At first due to the poor quality of the songs on the radio the record companies were not impacted at all, however, shortly after radios began being mass-produced the quality was greatly improved and as a result the record companies saw their sales plummet due to the popularity of the radio.
The radio was such a big impact in the music industry that nearly one hundred years later we are still playing songs on the radio today. In 1966 the 8-track goes on sale for the first time. The format of the 8-track was to challenge the cassette tape and despite its high-end sound quality it lacked the convenience and versatility that the cassette tape had and virtually disappeared. With the improvements in technology and that of playing and sharing songs, copyright problems increased as well. In the sass’s “The U.
S. Congress declares sound recordings worthy of copyright protection in passing the 1971 Sound Recording Amendment to the 1909 Copyright Statute. Though this amendment is proposed largely in response to the record industry complaints of vinyl bootlegging, he implications of the amendment are applied to the burgeoning recordable cassette market” (Taint). Executives of record companies complain that teenagers tape and swap their favorite albums illegally and take away from money they could throughout the sass’s.
The infringements hit the cassette industry slightly however in the late sass’s with the invention of the Walkway, the cassette industry was nearly ended. The Walkway was the only portable way to listen to music at that time and it immediately became a huge hit. I was talking to my parents about when the Walkway was invented and they both told me they immediately got one and fell in love with it. The continuing improvements in technology for providing people with new and improved ways to listen to music and tremendously improved the music industry and the way we listen to music. 990 was a major year for the improvement of the Walkway style of listening to music. In 1990 the combination of digital audio and the Internet create the birth of the MPH player. “The MPH compresses digital audio files by a factor of 12 too size that can be easily sent from computer to computer without compromising laity’ (Taint). MPH players and the internet have made music easily accessible to anybody at any given time.
Today we can listen to music on our phones, ‘pods, tablets, laptops, computers, in our cars either through the radio or through our ‘pods connected in our cars. Music has become a part of our everyday lives simply because the improvements in technology over the past century and if it weren’t for the improvement in technology music wouldn’t be as accessible and popular as it is today. Works Cited http://www. PBS. Org/high/pages/frontline/shows/music/inside/croon. HTML
