An introduction to our work on Music and Talk Radio

1. A Brief History of Recorded
Music
Some
background
to
where
we
are
now

2. The Beginning
• Before
'recording'
as
we
understand
it,
music
could
be
played
automa;cally
through
devices
like
'player
pianos'
-­‐
a
strip
of
paper
or
card
with
indenta;ons
or
spikes
read
by
a
machine
that
'played
the
piano'
for
you
• The
earliest
technologies
to
'capture'
music
emerged
in
the
1860s
-­‐
first
as
a
device
that
recorded
the
waveform
with
a
stylus
in
sand,
crea;ng
a
'diagram'
that
couldn't
be
played
back,
and
then
with
something
similar
that
could
then
'play'
the
waveform
of
vibra;ons
back
through
a
stylus
to
a
loudspeaker.
• Before
the
end
of
the
19th
Century,
every
piece
of
music
-­‐
in
fact
every
sound
-­‐
ever
heard
by
anybody,
was
heard
'live'
as
it
was
made.
The
only
way
to
listen
to
music
was
to
go
to
a
performance
or
to
perform
yourself.

3. Early Hardware
• Music
on
disk
was
available
from
the
late
19th
Century
and
remained
the
dominant
home
technology
for
nearly
a
hundred
years.
• Electrical
amplifica;on
and
recording
came
along
in
the
1920s,
improving
sound
quality.
The
first
electronic
audio
recording
released
in
the
UK
was
the
service
of
burial
of
the
Unknown
Soldier
in
1920.
• In
the
1950s
magne;c
tape
became
the
dominant
recording
medium,
and
also
ran
alongside
records
as
a
home-­‐technology
for
listening
to
music
(and
making
mix-­‐tapes)
aRer
the
compact
casseSe
was
developed
in
the
1960s

4. Analogue to Digital
• Un;l
the
mid
1980s
music
was
available
to
buy
on
record
or
casseSe
and
could
be
listened
to
as
well
on
the
radio,
and
on
a
very
small
number
of
TV
shows.
• CD
was
developed
as
a
new
digital
technology
and
released
in
the
mid
1980s.
Music
companies
soon
stopped
releasing
songs
on
vinyl
and
casseSe,
so
audiences
had
no
choice
other
than
to
go
to
CD
or
leave
the
game.
• The
industry
also
achieved
the
great
business
coup
of
making
people
re-­‐buy
lots
of
things
they
already
had
in
this
crucial
new
format
(see
also
VHS/DVD/BluRay)

5. Early fears about Piracy
• Since
the
1960s,
people
have
been
able
to
use
casseSes
to
copy
records.
The
music
industry
objected
to
this
'piracy'
and
put
a
log
on
their
products
-­‐
"Home
taping
is
killing
music".
They
didn't
want
people
to
copy
material
that
they
held
the
copyright
to.
For
every
blank
tape
sold,
a
few
pennies
went
to
the
record
companies
as
a
'piracy
levy'.
• ARer
home
technology
had
caught
up,
the
industry
made
sure
they
also
got
their
piracy
levy
on
blank
CDs

6. CDs and onward
• CDs
were
played
in
CD
players
and
nothing
much
else
un;l
the
mid
1990s
saw
the
growth
of
Personal
Computer
ownership.
• People
could
finally
use
their
computers
to
not
only
listen
to
CDs,
but
to
copy
the
content
onto
the
computer
and
to
burn
fresh
copies.
• There
were
prac;cal
problems
with
this
-­‐
uncompressed
music
files
were
big
and
computer
memory
capacity
was
small.
• There
were
also
CD
walkmen
but
they
had
their
own
prac;cal
problems
-­‐
unlike
tape
walkmen
(and
later
.mp3
players)
they
needed
to
be
held
fairly
steadily
or
they
would
skip.

7. Life Online
• The
internet
and
the
world
wide
web
developed
quickly
through
the
1990s
and
a
number
of
new
music
formats
arose
to
challenge
the
dominance
of
the
CD.
By
the
end
of
the
decade,
a
number
of
these
were
compressed
formats
-­‐
files
like
.wma,
.mp3
and
.aac
maintained
a
good
audio
standard
but
only
used
about
10%
of
the
data
of
uncompressed
.wav
files.
• At
the
same
;me
the
storage
space
on
home
computers
slowly
started
to
grow...

8. Online Piracy
• As
well
as
finding
an
easier
way
to
store
music,
the
WWW
gave
people
the
chance
to
copy
and
share
songs.
Suddenly,
instead
of
making
tapes
for
your
friends,
you
could
share
your
songs
on
the
WWW
to
anyone
else
who
was
looking.
The
trouble
is,
they
aren’t
your
songs,
they
‘belong’
to
the
record
company
or,
very
occasionally,
to
the
recording
ar;st.
• One
website
in
par;cular
that
led
the
way
in
file
sharing
was
Napster.
As
it
was
first
set
up,
Napster
opened
up
all
of
your
media
files
(your
songs)
and
made
them
available
for
anybody
else
to
copy
over
the
WWW.
In
the
same
way
you
could
copy
anybody
and
everybody
else’s
songs.
Every
song
stored
on
a
computer
connected
to
the
web
was
available
to
you.
All
for
free.
Who
would
ever
spend
money
on
music
again?

9. Responsible, Law-­‐Abiding Metallica
• The
industry
fought
back.
Some
bands
hated
Napster
and
thought
that
their
fans
were
stealing
from
them.
Metallica
led
the
way
in
taking
legal
ac;on
against
people
who
had
shared
their
songs
–
uploaded
them
(put
them
on
the
WWW
for
people
to
share)
or
downloaded
them
(copied
them
from
somebody
else
online).
• Eventually
Napster
as
a
free
file
sharing
site
was
shut
down.
The
record
industry
con;nues
to
pick
on
individuals
and
takes
them
to
court
in
the
hope
of
frightening
as
many
people
as
possible
out
of
downloading
or
uploading
songs.
• At
the
same
;me
people
find
more
and
more
ways
to
share
files
online
-­‐
through
newsgroups
and
other
online
communi;es,
through
torrent
files,
through
file
dumps
and
online
storage,
and
even
just
simply
aSached
to
emails
for
a
friend...

10. Industry Reponses
• Some
file
formats
have
copyright
protec;on
capabili;es
–
.mp3
and
.aac
both
have
this
feature.
This
makes
it
impossible
to
copy
a
file
more
than
a
specified
number
of
;mes,
or
it
;es
a
file
to
a
par;cular
iTunes
library
or
mobile
device
so
it
won't
play
on
any
other.
• The
record
industry
is
encouraging
legal
downloads,
either
through
monthly
subscrip;ons
to
download
sites
or
as
pay-­‐per-­‐song,
and
by
including
legal
download
sales
in
the
official
charts,
as
well
has
having
a
separate
download
chart.
In
the
last
few
years,
thanks
to
the
success
of
streaming
sites
like
Spo;fy
and
the
dominance
of
YouTube
(who
have
made
their
own
business
deals
with
the
industry)
playcounts
from
streaming
sites
are
also
big
news.
This
is
having
an
effect
upon
the
charts,
as
songs
appear
before
their
official
release
date
and
stay
in
the
charts
for
longer,
and
on
what
gets
played
on
the
radio,
because
playlist
mee;ngs
pay
close
aSen;on
to
what
people
are
listening
to,
however
they
might
be
listening
to
it.

11. Music On The Go
• Music
players
have
developed
alongside
the
new
file
formats
to
enable
people
to
listen
to
music
on
the
go.
From
small(ish)
mobile
radios
in
the
1970s,
to
casseSe
personal
stereos
(like
the
Sony
Walkman)
in
the
1980s,
to
minidisk
players
in
the
1990s,
to
MP3
players
(like
Apple’s
iPod)
now,
and
mobile
phones
incorpora;ng
large
memories
and
inbuilt
MP3
players.
• As
larger
and
larger
memory
became
physically
smaller
and
more
affordable,
it
seemed
possible
that
a
movement
away
from
compressed
audio
to
higher
quality
files
might
be
possible.
• However,
instead
larger
memory
players
are
disappearing
from
the
market,
and
instead
the
more
advanced
players
concentrate
on
integra;ng
a
music
player
with
a
web
browser,
social
media
access,
streaming
rights
and
cameras.
Apple
have
cut
the
biggest
memory
iPod
they
market
from
160GB
to
64GB
in
the
last
few
weeks
• There
has
always
been
a
trade
off
in
recorded
music
between
quality
and
quan;ty.
It
seems
that
quan;ty
-­‐
including
the
'quan;ty'
of
non-­‐audio
content
to
go
with
the
songs
-­‐
is
s;ll
winning.