This document provides a detailed timeline of key events in the music industry from the 1940s to the 1990s. It covers the transition from vinyl records to cassette tapes and CDs, the rise of digital music distribution through iTunes and the internet, and the history of music videos from their early promotional films in the 1960s to directors launching careers in the 1990s. Major innovations and companies that shaped the industry are mentioned such as the introduction of the LP record, cassette tapes, CDs, MIDI technology, and music streaming platforms like MP3.com. The music industry underwent major changes in distribution methods and faced challenges from new technologies like digital piracy and streaming.

1. BACKGROUND INFO ON
THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
M&M Productions

2. TIMELINE FOR THE 1940‟S
 1940 Production of records halted by World War II and the shortage of shellac, due to the invasion of
South East Asia by the Japanese. The replacement of the base material was discovered from a
plastic resin derivative of petroleum called vinyl.
David Sarnoff of RCA installed first secret recording devices in the White House for 11 weeks,
from June to October, using the same optical Phonofilm method used in RKO films.
 1941 The quality of the Magnetophone in Germany dramatically improved with the use of high
frequency biasing developed by Weber and Von Braunmuhl at AEG.
 1942 Armed Forces Radio Service created to distribute programs to soldiers overseas.
 1943 The first V-Discs were shipped from the RCA Victor pressing plant in Camden, New Jersey.
 1944 3M Co. (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) began tape coating experiments in U.S. under
Ralph J. Oace.

3. TIMELINE FOR THE 1940‟S
 1945 Working tape recorders brought back to the USA from Germany.
 1946 RCA Victor releases the very first commercial vinylite record.
 1947 Roy Brown recorded one of the earliest "rock and roll" songs Good Rocking Tonight on
DeLuxe label.
 1948 Columbia introduces the first 12-inch 33-1/3 rpm microgroove LP vinylite record with
23-minute play-time per side it also has a special turntable to play them on made by
Philco.
 1949 RCA Victor introduce the 7-inch 45 rpm micro-groove vinyl single and compatible turn
table. Capitol became the first major label to support all three recording speeds of 78,
45, 33-1/3 rpm.
Todd Storz from the KOWH radio station sets up a Top 40.

4. TIMELINE FOR THE 1950‟S
 1950 The improvements in sound quality of the new vinyl format encourage record companies
to embrace the technology, this marks the beginning of the end for the 78rpm shellac disc.
RCA Victor issues records on Columbia 12 inch LP format.
 1951 Columbia releases records on the RCA 7 inch 45 rpm format.
First Jukebox produced that was able to play 7 inch 45 rpm records.
 1952 Alan Freed starts the influential radio show Moondog's Rock and Roll Party.
 1953 Elvis Presley made his first recording (a personal disc for himself, not for his mother's
birthday that was in the spring) at the Sun studio of Sam Phillips in Memphis; the
second recording by Elvis at Sun was "That's All Right", released 19th July.

5. TIMELINE FOR THE 1950‟S
 1954 Record companies start to deliver 7 inch 45 rpm record singles to radio stations instead of
78s. Bill Haley releases "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Rock Around the Clock".
 1955 BBC begins FM broadcasting.
 1956 The Chrysler Imperial in-car turntable 16-2/3 rpm record player with 7-inch
ultramicrogroove records developed by Peter Goldmark - the man who invented the 33-1/3
rpm long playing (LP) record format.
 1957 The Recording Industry Association of America chooses the Westrex standard for stereo
records. Stereo vinyl is to became the dominant medium of recorded music.
 1958 RCA introduces its first stereo LPs.
 1959 The FCC decides the FM stereo broadcast format.

6. TIMELINE FOR THE 1960‟S
 1960 Ampex shared VTR patents with Sony and Sony shared transistorised circuitry with
Ampex.
 1961 RCA Victor release the compact single 33 - a 7inch playing at 33 1/3 - it didn't last
long.
Rupert Neve's introduced the first Valve mixer.
EMI sign The Beatles.
 1962 3M introduces Scotch 201/202 "Dynarange," a black oxide low-noise mastering tape
with a 4 dB improvement in s/n ratio over Scotch 111.
Twist Dance Fever originated by Hank Ballard hits the UK.

7. TIMELINE FOR THE 1960‟S
 1963 Bob Moog unveils voltage controlled synthesizer.
Andrew Loog Oldham manages the Rolling Stones and they sign a recording
contract with Decca.
Philips introduces compact cassette, offering free licenses worldwide. Wollensak
stereo open reel.
The Beach Boys contract Sunn Electronics to build the first large full-range
sound system for their rock music concert tour.
 1964 Pirate radio stations start broadcasting among them Radio Caroline.
Record sales in the UK up 60% on 1960.

8. TIMELINE FOR THE 1960‟S
 1965 Philips sells first cassette machines.
The Dolby Type A noise reduction system is introduced.
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass tour with a Harry McCune Custom Sound System.
 1966 "River Deep Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner and produced by Phil Spector with his
trademark "Wall of Sound" released.
 1967 Birth of Radio 1 using a Pirate Radio format as the offshore broadcasters are forced to withdraw.
The Monterey International Pop Festival becomes the first large rock music festival, with
performers including Jimi Hendrix, The Who & Otis Redding (who was killed that December).
Elektra releases the first electronic music recording: Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the
Moon.
Revox converts to solid state. Sgt. Peppers ushers in new age of popular recording.

9. TIMELINE FOR THE 1960‟S
 1968 Bill Hailey and the Comets designs and builds the sound system for the Woodstock
Music Festival.
CBS releases "Switched-On Bach," Walter (Wendy) Carlos's polyphonic multitracking
of Moog's early music synthesizer.
 1969 The Woodstock Festival, billed as 3 days of peace and love, takes place in upstate
New York.

10. TIMELINE FOR THE 1970‟S
 1970 Ampex introduced the Instavision that it had developed with Toshiba; N.V. Philips introduced its own videocassette
recorder (VCR) format in Europe; AVCO introduced a solid state compact Cartrivision VCR.
 1971 The great consumer format flop; the Quadraphonic sound, launched by Japanese firms.
Klark-Teknik start manufacture of graphic equalizers.
 1972 Chrome cassettes and Dolby; first Advent decks.
Denon develops digital recorder and introduces first digitally recorded LP.
 1973 Electro-Voice and CBS licensed by Peter Scheiber to produce quadraphonic decoders using his patented
matrixes.
 1974 Amek and Soundcraft introduce consoles and Amek also introduces Grandmaster recording tape that
remained the standard for next 15 years.
The Grateful Dead produce the "Wall of Sound" at the San Francisco Cow Palace, incorporating separate
systems for vocals, each of the guitars, piano and drums. Dupont introduces chromium dioxide (CrO2)
cassette tape.

11. TIMELINE FOR THE 1970‟S
 1975 Sony Betamax became the first successful home video and then later died a natural death in the market
place.
 1976 Digital tape recording begins to take hold in professional audio studios.
The VHS video cassettes was introduced to the market place.
 1977 RCA announced in March it would sell VHS with 4-hour tapes.
3M and Denon introduced digital-multitrack automation for the masses including the MCI JH-50. The
Tascam 80-8demo studio becomes reality.
 1978 Wollensak makes last open reel recorder marks the end of the amateur reel-to-reel era.
Pioneer developed the LaserDisc that was first used by General Motors to train Cadillac salesmen.
 1979 Sony introduced the TPS-L2 Walkman portable audio cassette player, inaugurating a new era of personal
music listening.
3M introduces the metal-particle cassette tape.

12. TIMELINE FOR THE 1980‟S
 1980 Sony introduced first consumer video camcorder.
 1981 3M was no longer a market force, leading audiophile engineers declare war against digital as acquisition system.
The MIDI system is standardised as the universal synthesizer interface.
 1982 Philips and Sony introduce compact disc in late 1982 to the buying public and the American dominance of formats
is ended, that same year, Sony acquires MCI.
Sony releases the first CD player, the Model CDP-101.
 1983 BT's Fibre-optic cable is used for long-distance digital audio transmission in linking New York and Washington.
Sony introduced the Beta HiFi VCR with high-quality FM sound.
 1984 The Apple Corporation market the Macintosh computer and in that same year sales of the recorded compact
cassettes (audio cassettes) exceeded LP record sales for the first time.

13. TIMELINE FOR THE 1980‟S
 1985 Sony introduced the 8-mm format in April; the VHS group, led by JVC, brought out a compact
version of VHS, known as VHS-C, but it only recorded for 20 minutes.
 1986 R-DAT recorders are introduced in Japan and Dr. Gunther Theile gave a prescribe description of a
novel stereo "sphere microphone.".
 1987 LEF Digidesign markets "Sound Tools," a Macintosh-based digital workstation using DAT as its
source and storage medium.
 1988 CD becomes dominant medium.
Super-VHS video format equalled 8-mm in picture quality but not in sound quality.
 1989 Sony introduced the Hi8 video format and the Sony CCD-V99 camcorder.
Dolby S brings new generation of inexpensive 24 tracks to home use.

14. TIMELINE FOR THE 1990‟S
 1990 Dolby proposes a 5-channel surround-sound scheme for home theatre systems, and the write-once CD-R becomes a
commercial reality.
The BT invention of ISDN telephone links are offered for high-end studio use.
 1991 Wolfgang Ahnert presents, in a binaural simulation, the first digitally enhanced modeling of an acoustic space.
 1992 The Philips DCC and Sony's MiniDisc, using digital audio data-reduction, are offered to consumers as record/play
hardware and software.
Recordable CD's become commonplace.
 1993 In the first extensive use of "distance recording" via ISDN, producer Phil Ramone records the "Duets" album with Frank
Sinatra.
Digital HDTV Grand Alliance in October selected Dolby AC-3 to provide digital surround sound for the emerging
technology of digital television.
 1994 Global Big 6 control $30 billion record industry: Philips (owns Polygram, A&M, Mercury, Island), Sony (owns CBS
Records), Matsushita (owns MCA, Geffen), Thorn-EMI (owns Capitol, Virgin), Time Warner, and Bertelsmann (owns
RCA Records).

15. TIMELINE FOR THE 1990‟S
 1995 By September, all companies in the DVD consortium agreed to DVD standards.
The first "solid-state" audio recorder, the Nagra ARES-C, is introduced. It is a battery-operated field unit recording on PCMCIA
cards using MPEG-2 audio compression.
 1996 Iomega debuts high-capacity "Jazz" and "Zip" drives, useful as removable storage media for hard-disk recording. DVD players
started selling in Japan, and began in 1997 selling in the U.S.
 1997 DVD videodiscs and players are introduced. An audio version with 6 channel surround sound is expected to eventually supplant
the CD as the chosen playback medium in the home.
San Diego's MP3.com was founded in November by Michael Robertson.
 1998 MP-3 players for downloading MP-3 Audio music from the Internet appeared.
The Winter Olympics open with a performance of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," played and sung by synchronizing live audio feeds
from five continents with an orchestra and conductor at the Olympic stadium in Nagano, Japan, using satellite and the BT
ISDN technology.
 1999 The 5 largest record companies in the U.S. controlled 84% of the 755 million albums sold in the U.S. in 1999: 26.3% by
Seagram's Universal (owns MCA, Polygram), 16.2% by Sony Music (owns Columbia), 16% by Bertelsmann's BMG (owns RCA
Victor), 15.7% by Time Warner's Warner Music, 9.4% by EMI.

16. MUSIC DISTRIBUTION
 Music has gone through many formats of distribution over the years, the first
of which was the vinyl record.
 There was a lot of controversy when it came to having to change the method of
distribution to CD‟s.
 Many record labels we reluctant to pick up the use of CD‟s because the potential
for piracy was just too great and companies only agreed to use CD‟s if the
technology to create CD‟s was kept too high for the average householder to buy so
that piracy would be kept to a minimum. But as the years went on, so did
technology and soon most computers were able to burn CD‟s

17. THE I NTERNET – BLESSI NG OR
CURSE?
 The internet is a wonderful thing, we can find all sort of handy things
out at a few strokes of the keyboard
 You can go to YouTube and listen to all of your favorite songs in a
instant
 However this isn‟t such a light hearted situation for the music industry
because most people would rather go to YouTube to listen to their
favorite songs rather than going out and buying them. In 2003 something
amazing happened: iTunes was created

18. ITUNES
 iTunes was released in 2003 and was a piece of software that allowed
one to digitally obtain songs rather than going out an buying the full
album, why would you when you can download the few songs that you
might like rather that having to buy all the song and you not liking the rest
 iTunes has over 435 million accounts and have sold over 6 billions
songs since 2003 and is responsible 75% of all digital song sales in key
territories including England and America

19. MUSIC VIDEOS
 First music video – Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a short film
„Saint Louis Blues‟ which featured a dramatized version of the hit song. This
was shown in theatres until 1932.
 Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) is one of the songs generally considered to have
been the first music video.
 Thriller by Michael Jackson is arguably one of the most famous music videos of
all time. It was a 14 minute video which featured the performance of the song as
well as a screenplay. Thriller is known as being „a watershed moment for the music
industry‟ because of its merging of filmmaking and music.

20. H I S T O RY O F T H E M U S I C V I D E O
– K E Y DAT E S
 1965 The Beatles use promotional films – 10 films to promote album releases, kicks off video promotion.
 1981 MTV launched – 24hr broadcast means music videos begin to play a central role in music marketing.
 1982 Thriller – Michael Jackson‟s most successful and influential video of all time released
 1985 VH1 launched – featured softer music & catered to an older demographic, widening the audience of music
videos
 1992 Rise of the directors – listed in the credits for the first time, directors such as Goudry and Romanek launch
careers
 1995 Scream – the Jackson‟s “Scream” is the most expensive music video ever, costing £7 million to produce
 2005 YouTube – allows people to watch videos online. New artists see popularity rise through internet
 2005 iTunes opens – allows music videos to be downloaded from the internet. Reaches 1 million downloads after
20 days.
 2010 One billion – Lady Gaga‟s music videos views reach one billion views. „Poker Face‟ sees 373mill views done.
 2010 New Heights – number of music videos viewed online reaches 34 billion with 183 million viewers.

21. MARKETING & PROMOTION
Publicity
 Artists gain publicity from reviews in magazines and online
(Billboard, NME etc.)
 Also gain publicity from word of mouth and recommendations
(particularly for smaller bands/artists)
 Word of mouth quoted as being “still the best advertising a band
can get”

22. ADVERTISING
 Artists use different advertising methods, depending on their
popularity:
 Internet advertising e.g. Facebook, YouTube ads
 Television adverts – for albums or commercial products e.g.
Professor Green – Relentless
 Radio adverts
 Billboards

23. RETAIL/DISTRIBUTION
 CDs can still be bought in a variety of stores e.g. HMV,
supermarkets
 Albums/singles available to buy on iTunes (more and more
customers purchasing select tracks as opposed to an entire album)
 Internet distribution – prevents distribution costs, piracy/illegal
downloads (publicity for artists/less revenue gained by artists)

24. MERCHANDISING
 Accounts for an ever-growing percentage of a band‟s income due
to illegal downloads/decreasing record sales
 Merchandising – t-shirts, posters, hats, jewellery etc
 Synergy – artists creating songs specifically for films/games

25. TOURING
 Touring is the major source of income for most artists
 In most cases touring is used to promote a new album
 Gives artists a chance to connect and give back to the fans
 Amount of tours also depends on popularity of band –
mainstream artists don‟t rely on touring as much as smaller artists
who find touring their main source of income.

26. FAN BASE
 Artists need a solid fan base to target their music towards
 Some artists have developed solid cult-like fan bases e.g. 30 Seconds to
Mars “ The Echelon”
 Some artists hold meets with fans
 Use the internet to connect with fans (fan
pages, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs etc.)
 Some artists get fans involved with albums e.g. voting for album/single
titles