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- Introduction to Media Industries
- Class 6, Recorded Music
- A. 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
- B. 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
- C. 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
- D. 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
- E. 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?