Today, there are several music industries worldwide -regional,national and international- all of them with a summed up worth of billions. Each year hundreds of thousands of tracks are produced and every day there seems to be a new artist on the top of the chart.
The music industries function primarily based on record sales and that is what decides the fate of both recording companies and the artists. But when did it all begin?
Let’s take a quick look at the evolution of music production.
- It all began with Thomas Edison introducing the phonograph in 1877 and the physical recordings of sound for playback became an existing entity
- In 1948, the vinyl record was introduced and they were at the peak of popularity in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
- Then comes the analog recording with “reel to reel” tape machines that took electric signals and transferred them into magnetic signals on the tape.
- In 1964 the cassette tape replaced the LP records and became the first music playing agent of portable music devices like the Sony Walkman.
- In the early 1980’s,Compact Disk or CD was released and with it began the digital era of music. The digital sound does not make a continuous reproduction of the sound but rather tricks the ear into thinking that it is continuous by sampling at very small intervals.
- Cut to the current scenario, even though CD’s are quite in use, the hype is of cloud music or virtually stored music. There are several platforms that allow a user to buy(iTunes, Play store), stream in exchange for monthly/yearly charges (Tidal, Apple Music, Spotify) or stream for free (YouTube, Soundcloud),several soundtracks available on the internet.