Juan Monroy — Recorded Music

Technology
- amplitude
  - height of wave
  - measured in bels (B) or decibels (dB)
- wavelength
  - length of a wave
  - cycle (frequency)
- recording sound
  - sound is vibration
  - “writing” those vibrations on a medium
Development
- Eduouard-Leon Scott de Martinville
  - hog’s hair bristle and a funnel
  - scratched the liquid surface (lamp black)
- Thomas Edison (1877)
  - black foil cylinders
  - playback by repositioning the needle on the surface
Entrepreneurial Stage
- Edison’s phonograph (1877)
  - office recording machine
  - patent for a type of answering machine
- Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter’s graphophone (1886)
  - wax cylinder
  - complement the telephone as a recorder
- popular music is the “killer app”
  - pre-recorded music on cylinders
  - popular but difficult to mass produce
  - cylinders were not very durable
Mass Market Stage
- Berliner’s Gramophone (1887)
  - flat round disks
  - zinc, coated with beeswax
  - played on a turntable
  - disks can be mass produced by pressing
  - stamped with labels to differentiate title, performer,
    composer
- Tin Pan Alley
  - Started in the 1880s along Broadway and 28th Street, New York
    City
  - Sheet music for piano
  - Biggest Sellers
    - John Phillip Sousa: Marches
    - Scott Joplin’s: Rags
  - Notable Composers:
    - Irving Berlin
    - George Gershwin
    - Cole Porter
- Victor Talking Machine Company
  - Victrola (1906)
    - record player inside a piece of furniture
    - crank operated (1906)
    - electrically operated (1925)
  - an essential consumer goods by the 1920s
- Phonographs
  - 10-inch, 78 rpm record became the standard
  - sales hurt by radio and the Great Depression
  - made of shellac until WWII
  - made from polyvinyl
    - more durable
    - better sound fidelity
- Influence of Tin Pan Alley
  - Three-Minute Song Length
  - Verse-Chorus-Verse Structure
  - Repetition of Title
- Vocalists
  - Originated in Vaudeville
  - Part of Tin Pan Alley
  - Notable Performers 1920s
    - Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker
    - Belle Baker
    - Al Jolson
  - Later Performers
    - Bing Crosby
    - Frank Sinatra
- Rise of Rock and Roll
  - Combined Memphis’s rhythm and blues with Nashville’s country
    - etymology of rock and roll (sex!)
    - embraced by youth
    - fomented culture wars
  - radically altered music industry and American culture
    - African-American art form goes mainstream
    - ended era of popular composers
    - early rock and roll pioneer: Chuck Berry
- RCA vs. CBS format war
  - CBS introduced 33 1/3 rpm long-playing record (1948)
    - 20 minutes of music on each side
    - created market for multisong albums and longer classical
      music
  - RCA developed a competing 45-rpm (1949)
    - quarter-sized hole for jukeboxes
    - invigorated market for sales of songs heard on jukeboxes
  - incompatible formats
  - truce reached in 1953
    - LP became standard for long-playing albums
    - 45s became standard for singles
    - record players were designed to play both formats
- magnetic tape
  - developed in the 1930s
    - reel to reel
    - too much tape required to make a recording
    - tape would break easily due to brittleness
  - AGFA (German company) during WWII years used plastic magnetic
    tapes
    - more durable
    - sound editing
    - multitrack mixing
- multichannel sound
  - stereophonic sound (1931)
    - Alan Blumlein
    - commercially available in 1958
    - recorded many different instruments which were mixed down
      to two, stereo tracks
  - quadrophonic sound (1971)
    - four-track sound
    - did not catch on commercially
- Cassette Tapes (1960s)
  - Portability of music
  - Home dubbing: copy music from records or radio
  - Sony Walkman
Convergence Stage
- digital recording
  - Thomas Stockham, digital recorder in 1967
  - analog vs. digital
    - fluctuations
    - encoded into binary
  - compact discs
    - Philips and Sony
    - lower cost than vinyl
    - debuted in 1983
    - surpassed LP sales in 1987
- file-based recording media
  - MP3 (1992) Motion Pictures Expert Group
  - compressed file size, making exchange and storage easier
  - Napster
  - Supreme Court ruled against file-sharing services
- Recording Music
  - expensive process
  - Personnel
    - Artist & Repertoire Agents
    - Recording Session
      - artist
      - producer
      - engineer and technicians
  - Multitrack recording
    - usually one track per instrument
    - mixed down to a two-channel master
- Music Labels
  - Big Three
    - Universal
    - Sony BMG
    - Warner Music
  - Independents
    - significant market share
    - could it be because music recording and publishing has
      been so much easier to realize?
- Selling Music
  - Where does the money go from a $17 compact disk?
  - And what about a digital download?