Music is everywhere. It’s in the background of movies, it’s on the opening of TV shows, it plays when we visit our favorite website, and it accompanies us on our walk to school. But imagine a time when you could hear a song on the radio, and not be able to go out and buy it, or download it off the internet. Digital recording is a fairly new technology, before MP3’s and CD’s we had cassette tapes, 8-tracks, and records. Even now some purists insist that LP’s sound better than CD’s. The history of recorded sound dates much further back then the last 200 years (the ancient Greeks are said to have had a statue with the ability to make the sound of a harp string as far back as 1500 B.C.), however recording of the human voice and music began in the last half of the 19 th century. Thomas Edison The idea for Edison’s phonograph came from his experiments with “multiplexing” telegraph signals. The theory was that electronic impulses could be transmitted across telegraph wires to produce horn like representations of the human voice. The signals could also create pictures. This basic concept was the precursor to the telephone, the fax machine, and in some ways even the internet. The evolution of this concept was a device which could transcribe telegraph messages on paper and later send them across other telegraphs. He then wondered if he could do the same with telephone conversations. After experimenting with a device that used a needle to make indents in paraffin paper, he swapped the paper for a metal cylinder with tinfoil wrapped around it. The first recording of the human voice was complete. Emile Berliner later changed the cylinder in the phonograph to a flat disc and the first record was born. Colombia later took this a step further and created an electronic device that created a better sounding recording using electronic cutters as heads rather then the purely mechanical devices that preceded it. Notably, Edison remained stubborn with is cylinders but eventually began to manufacture flat discs, he also created his own version of the electronic recorder (which he had been experimenting with from the beginning).
Valdemar Poulsen The logical next step for magnetic recording was multi-tracking. Experiments on multi-tracking began as early as the 1940’s. Magnetic tapes would be mounted with 4 heads equipped with recording abilities, the heads could then record up to 4 simultaneous tracks on one tape. This meant that bands could be broken up into sections (rhythm, horn, vocal, etc.) and perform their piece on separate tracks, if one member made a mistake the track could just be recorded again without having to redo the other sections. This was a huge step in music recording. Eventually up to 24 tracks could be recorded at one time on very large tapes. All of this recording technology was a wonder in the studio but it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it became a part of the home. RCA introduced the stereo cassette tape in 1958 it set the standard for analog recording for the next 30 years. Until CD’s came along this would be the most widely used music medium in the home.
THE COMPACT DISK The music industry has been changed and has had great advancements throughout history. One of the main forms of advancement stems from the ways in which the industry has faced recording, and publication. Society has seen the industry veer from the standard eight-track, to the record, to the tape, to CD, to MP3, etc., and with each new advancement, the entire industry changes. It isn’t uncommon for a person to see many changes of medium within a lifetime. With each change comes better quality, more innovation, and more possibility for further progression. The Compact Disc James T. Russell Phillips Electronics The “Re-writeable” Compact Disc
MP3 PIONEERS The availability for music to be downloaded off of the internet at no charge quickly transformed how music and computers would be seen for future reference. In the beginning, the format for downloading did run into various problems, creating limitations, and staggering its popularity. The files that were downloaded were generally so large that it took lengthy periods of time, and before the times of DSL and Cable internet, dial-up computer modems only made it slower. By the end of the year 2000, music downloading was seen as means for artists to promote albums through websites, or even sell their complete album online. Soon there after came the controversy of mp3’s and mp3 players. This allowed for people to download, or essentially record the music through their personal computers without having to pay for any of it. The Recording Industry Association of America brought this issue to the courts saying that the Rio Portable mp3 player violated anti-piracy laws. One such file sharing system which revolutionized is Napster, created by Shawn Fanning. Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing network, allowed for thousands of people share the music they had on their personal computers with many others at simultaneously over the internet. So just one person needed to have the file, and thousands of others could have it within moments, without taking away from the quality of sound as recording a cassette or CD had previous boundaries with. Napster brought on controversy by record labels as well as recording artists claiming it was in actuality, stealing the music. Napster was soon brought to court, but lost the case. In San Francisco, a judge ordered Napster to stop its users from sharing songs which had been copyrighted. But as it sounds, this was an impossible task to accomplish, who would know which songs had been copyrighted, and which had not. Today, Napster still exists, but now a fee must be paid, and Napster has user agreements with multiple record labels. When looking in 2005, though Napster is a fee based system, this still hasn’t stopped the public from technically pirating music. Now there are many other peer-2-peer file sharing networks which are Napster like, these include, Kazaa, Bearshare, eMule, and many others. Now if people pay these networking systems a fee, it is for access to premiums such as faster downloading speeds, but getting access to millions of songs definitely can outweigh the one fee that the user pays. It has become a part of everyday culture, a way for someone to just download the one song off the CD they like, versus having to buy the complete album. Now through the combination of mp3’s and CD burning, people are able to create tons of their own CD’s, and for free. Music labels have tried to counter this by slightly decreasing the costs of CD’s to increase incentive to by, adding extras on the CD you couldn’t get in a download like making the CD more CD-ROM like with pictures and the like, filing law suits against individuals, musicians have tried campaigning on television trying to force a guilt upon people who do download music illegally, and these labels and musicians have also tried to flood the peer-2-peer networks with bad files. But even with all these efforts, though it may have deterred some from downloading music, for most, it is still a way of life. One proof of the mp3 living strong, is the overwhelming popularity of the Apple Ipod, one the most popular forms of an mp3 portable player being able to store as many as 12000 songs.
CITATIONS Computers and Information Systems. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 17, 2005, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Apple website, Ipod. (2005). Apple Website. Retrieved May 17, 2005, from http://www.apple.com/ipod/ Morton, D. (1998). Retrieved May. 12, 2005, from The History of Sound Recording Technology Web site: http://www.recording-history.org. Sage, G. (1996). Early recorded sound and wax cylinders. Retrieved May. 12, 2005, from www.tinfoil.com MIT School of Engineering. (1999). James T. Russell: The Digital Compact Disc Web site. Retrieved May 13, 2005, from http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/russell.html. Philips Electronics. Britannica Student Encyclopedia. Retrieved may 15, 2005, from Encyclopedia Britannica online, http://www.search.eb.com/ebi/article?tocId=9312962. Compact Disc. Britannica Student Encyclopedia. Retrieved may 15, 2005, from Encyclopedia Britannica online, http://www.search.eb.com/ebi/article?tocId=9273758&query=Compact%20disc&ct=.
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James T. Russell (Left), born in Bremerton Washington, is a very influential inventor in the music industry. Russell, an avid music fan, frustrated by the poor quality of his records, set out to create a means of playing music that would have better longevity. With this goal in mind, Russell created the first “digital-to-optical recording and playback system,” what we know now as the compact disc. He used light to read the product instead of actually touching the material. The invention was finished in the late 1960s, and was originally patented by 1970. By 1985, Russell had over 26 patents on the invention, and sold the licenses to companies like Phillips Electronics, to produce the compact disc. 