Music technology is one of the best things that comes with music, it is one of the most interesting parts and it is the most in-depth part of developing technology in music. These are the ways in history that music affected consumption in society. In 1857, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph. This is a machine that traces soundwaves instead of recording soundwaves. The intent of this is to make music visible on soot-covered paper. These were not able to be reproduced by analog means, these were played back in 2008 because of digital imaging. Later in 1877, Thomas Edison’s work on the telephone transmitter and the keyboard phone gave him the idea to make up sketches and an idea for a device that would be able to record and playback sound impulses that were imprinted on tin foil. Later, one of Thomas Edison’s employees (John Kruesi) built the first tinfoil phonograph, based completely on Edison’s sketches. Some recall that the first-ever recording was a verse from “Mary Had a little lamb”. In 1886 the development of the wax cylinder came about, it took six years of experimenting with varied recording technology, and scientists at the Volta laboratory were granted patents for the improved sound recording. These scientists called their device the graphophone. The wax cylinder was a way that cutting the wax was the same as the tinfoil way but made dents in the wax. In 1887 German inventor by the name of Emile Berliner, he was granted a patent to create a machine to record sound by tracing a lateral, instead of a vertical groove of even depth onto a cylindrical drum. In 1888, the phonograph and gramophone were joined under the North American phonograph company in a failed attempt to market the machines. In 1894, the flat disk record first appeared. This started the format war. For the next 20 years, there was a lot of competition, especially between the flat record and the cylinder. In 1896, the phonograph was used as a consumer good. Both Edison and Columbia began offering spring-motored phonographs at very affordable prices. This allowed a lot of households the opportunity to listen to music, this is the first time that a consumer had gotten a sound machine. In 1901, Victor was born. Victor is the mascot for Vitor the talking machine company, this company was incorporated by Eldridge R Johnson following the unfortunate demise of the Berliner gramophone company. In 1902 there was a mass production of recordings as Edison and Columbia's market molded a lot of cylinders, they produced recordings from the master mold, prior to this, commercial cylinders were copied from pantographs or by dubbing. In 1904, the very first musical superstar appeared on the scene. This man was called Enrico Caruso. In 1917 the very first jazz recording was made by Victor The Talking Machine Company by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. These recordings by this band began a whole new torrent for musical recordings in this style. In 1928 recording radio broadcasts are introduced and in 1934 recording radio broadcasts were introduced, this made the lacquer-coated blank disk famous for home and broadcast use. In 1935 introduced the magnetic tape recording and the magneto phone. This tape recorder is a pioneering tape recorder, By 1938, the technology improved to meet the standards of the very basic broadcasting standards. In the 1940s, the multitrack recording was introduced, the first way this was introduced was by Walt Disney's feature film Fantasia, which was seen to have a four-track recording derived from eight recording channels, this was compared to surround sound. In the early years, Instant, portable sound recording came into play. This was created because of improvements from a culmination of advances to the magnetic tape recording style. The 1950s brought light to stereo recordings, ’57 was the year in which the first stereo records were sold commercially. In the 60s, tape recordings were miniaturized and quieted, due to the company Phillips introducing the cassette tape. The Beatles are a steeple in music technology as they were one of the first bands on capitol records to hit the American market with their vinyl “Introducing The Beatles” and “Meet The Beatles”. In 1980, the Walkman was introduced to the public, this was a stereo cassette tape player, and it made it easy for listeners to walk around and travel and listen to music, using headphones. ’83 saw another war within formats, as the CD and the disk player are marketed to the public, this would eventually push stereo LPs out to this new convenient way of listening to music. In 1996, Digital encoding is introduced as a new way to listen to music and is marketed as a high-quality, low-bit audio format that has become the norm for music nowadays. In ’99, iTunes was developed, and along with it came a media player and library which users can use to purchase and store music and organize them accordingly. In 2001 iTunes created a portable device that could store thousands of songs.
I believe that every single one of these inventions and parts of history accumulated and contributed to the way that music is perceived and obtained by the public. I believe that the first creation of the phonautograph was one of the steeples of music technology as not only did it kick start everything, but without it we wouldn’t have all of the necessary technologies to listen or record music in the way that we do now. I believe that the Walkman, MP3, and CD were the most prominent devices in music technology as not only were they all invented for the consumer, but they're all much better than the cylindrical wax device as well as the LP, even though the LP is legendary. I believe the MP3 has greater power over the other two as it can be downloaded at a lower bit rate and it doesn’t have much memory whilst keeping the same high quality as the CD. I believe the MP3 is better than the other ways of consuming music as not only does it have high quality, it is a lot more accessible than the other two, MP3s can be accessed at any point, especially within their respective playlists or albums. With CDs and Cassettes, you need a player and the cassette and CD, whereas the MP3, all you need is the mp3 player and everything you want is on the device. I believe that the Walkman was one of the most revolutionary of the devices as it was the first consumer device that you could take anywhere and listen to music in any situation, the same with the CD, but I believe that it was built up from the Walkman and adapted for updated forms of music consumption. I think that the LP was high up with user consumption as it was one of the first ways that consumers listened to music and the CD has a lot of similarities towards it. I think that because of the way the LP has very significant limitations, it is a lot further down my list of the most effective, but it had the most impact on consumers, especially in the early years of music and its technologies. Most music now is virtual and mostly in CD form. I think this is where the cassette is discarded as it just isn’t produced anymore and it doesn't have a significant impact on the consumer as it used to. I think that a lot of digital music is the most important currently for music, although a lot of the old forms of music are making a comeback. LPs and records are becoming a lot more popular despite their musical and personal limitations to the listener.
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