Introduction:
“The workman who got the sketch was John Kruesi. I didn’t have much faith that it would work, expecting that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it was absurd.” ~ Thomas Edison on discovering the phonograph.
The era of instantly accessible music began when Edison took the simple leap of faith that led to the phonograph. The phonograph evolved into record players then tape decks then Discmans and now hard drives—most notably the market-dominating iPod by Apple. For years, “the speaking machine” was a fixture of fiction, and despite the efforts to produce such a device, all attempts could not get the recording of sound to playback. But on the day in 1877, when John Kruesi said and heard the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, the state of not just music, but culture, was permanently altered.
No longer would music only be available via live performances. While it took more than a century to reach the age of online music-sharing that we are currently in, it is that once complex, but now primitive machine that etched the vibrations of sound onto a metal cylinder (and later a disc), which is the sole reason why people can carry thousands of albums around in their pocket today.
However, advances in recording and audio playback technology are just one of the reasons for the abundance of music in the present era. Computer-based innovations—specifically the development of broadband internet, portable music players, music streaming sites, and file sharing programs—have reshaped the music industry in a profound and irreversible way. Prior to the development of the equipment and programs that enabled thousands of bands to self-record and self-distribute, record labels were the grease that lubed the cogs of the big music machine.
This also meant that labels essentially had the power to shape the market, since it was the bands and artists they signed and funded that would often get the most exposure. Presently, a band or artist can use relatively affordable equipment to record at home, mix at home, and release from their home.
This, in conjunction with the internet as a means of distribution, has allowed unknown and label-free bands to develop a following without much monetary investment. Additionally, better known artists have been able to transition away from a dependency on record labels, giving themselves more artistic and financial freedom in the process.
Nevertheless, a lot of time and dedication is required to develop a following on the web, given the bulk amount of artists and bands competing for the attention of listeners. For the consumer, this is fantastic—a wide array of choices are available, which will often yield a few gems here and there. However, for the independent music producer/distributor, it requires a creative approach in order to stand out—and often the best approach is thoughtful, unique, and well-composed music. In this report we will explore how specific recording and internet innovations have helped liberate musicians, marking a new period of musical experimentation in America and around the world.
Bringing the Studio Home:
How DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) Changed the Way Music is Made
The Reamp
Re-amping allows a musician to directly record a clean track from their instrument to be used as a template to build off of. The track is then replayed through an amp multiple times in order to experiment with a variety of different effects and settings. This has made it easier for musicians to explore a broad range of possibilities when working on the composition of a song. As a result, re-amping has been one of the major factors for the increase in home or budget studios. Furthermore, it has worked to save artists and labels money as a musician can go to a studio, lay down the clean track, and then go home, leaving the engineer to work with the track. This is much simpler than having a musician spend hours doing take after take in the studio, using a trial and error approach towards the readjustment of effects and settings.
Multi-Tracking Software
Multi-track recording, which records the various bits and pieces of a song separately and then mixes them together to form the whole, is typically the preferred method of recording. However, it wasn’t until the addition of computers and digital recording technology that the number of tracks that could be mixed simultaneously went from the analog tape-based systems’ max of 24 to a limitless amount.
Hard drives offered a new and more efficient way of storing tracks than their tape predecessors; and the computer, along with software such as Pro Tools, which serves as a virtual mixing board, made it easier to edit and mix multiple tracks together to form a cohesive piece of music.
The combination of computer-based mixing software and the Reamp, opened up an infinite array of possibilities for the ambitious musician. In fact, user-friendly tracking programs such as Apple’s Garage Band enables people with little to no musical background to turn out quality music through the use of pre-recorded instrumental tracks and music samples that can be pieced together like a puzzle.
Garage Band hobbyists aside, musicians were able to afford to record professional-quality music from the comfort of their own home. This allowed bands and artists to put together albums and demos either for free or on a small budget since they could avoid paying for studio time and mixing. Considering that Pro Tools sells for $250, it is a sound investment as the ability to mix an unlimited amount of songs will eventually cause Pro Tools to pay for itself.
Digital Audio Interface
Since computers replaced the big and clunky tape-based recording systems of the past, a way of getting sound into and out of the computer and mixing programs was needed. Digital Audio Interfaces offered more flexible and adaptable audio inputs/outputs than the ones typically found on a computer. Additionally, they allow for multiple instruments to be recorded and tracked at once. While quality DAIs can run anywhere from $250 on up, it can be an expensive buy initially, but again, the ability to record freely whenever the urge arises makes up for the pricey one-time investment.
Pocket Music:
How Internet and Music Playback Innovations Increased the Accessibility of Music
It was during the late 1990’s when people began using the Internet as a source for music instead of local music stores. New technologies made it possible to convert sound into digital formats that can be stored in computer files which can be downloaded from websites and saved onto personal computers. Music files can also be transferred from a computer to portable players like the iPod or Zune, burned on CDs, and broadcast on Internet radio stations.
Many artists use the Internet as a new way to publicize their music and gain recognition. Supporters say that the growth of online music is a “positive trend” and that it has “given listeners a fast and easy means of discovering and enjoying music.” Artists also feel that the Internet provides them with more options and possibilities than music stores.
But not everyone is happy about the wide-spread accessibility of music on the Internet. Some critics believe that the Internet has become a “safe haven” for computer pirates seeking to quickly and easily plunder music. Others are upset by the fact that CD sales have been declining and they believe the “uncontrolled trading of music files has thrown many musicians, record companies, and record stores into financial jeopardy.” If people can acquire music for free online, then what’s the point of going out and buying CDs? This is why many critics of music piracy believe the music industry is in trouble.
Record Companies to File Sharing
Before file sharing boomed, the music industry was dominated by record companies which release music through labels: Time-Warner Inc. (whose labels include Virgin Records, Capitol Records, Warner Bros. and Elektra Records), Bertelsmann AG’s BMG Entertainment (including Arista and RCA Records), Sony Corp. (Columbia, Epic and Legacy Records) and Universal Music Group (Geffen, MCA and Interscope Records). The record companies spend huge amounts of money finding artists, providing them with equipment and money necessary to record music, set up tours, and produce videos and other merchandise.
In recent years, artists have been able to be less reliant on record companies and started using the Internet and social networking websites like Myspace to release their music and garner attention.
Development of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
The service that sparked the immense popularity of internet file-sharing was Napster. Napster was developed in 1999 by Sean Fanning, a student at Northeastern University in Boston. While MP3s were already being transferred across the internet with websites such as MP3.com, there wasn’t a service that allowed users to search for songs, download them, and play them all in one program. Napster provided a search engine for MP3s and a network to allow users to trade songs with each other directly. This made Napster unique in the fact that there was no central server supplying the MP3 files. Users “shared” songs by downloading songs directly from other users’ computers. Its popularity exploded, by February of 2001 the program had 24.7 million users.
What Napster’s users viewed as “sharing,” however, was viewed by many in the music industry as illegal, and it sparked a debate as to whether Napster was beneficial or detrimental to the music industry. Many musicians felt Napster was a beneficial promotional tool, especially for bands with little promotional power and no major label backing them. It enabled musicians to circulate their music themselves for free. Other musicians, however, were enraged by Napster; they felt users were stealing their music. The heavy metal band Metallica, specifically their drummer, Lars Ulrich, became the de facto anti-Napster and anti-piracy voice when they filed a lawsuit against the service. It was settled in court that Napster’s service was guilty of copyright infringement and the network was shut down in July, 2001.
Development of Legal Music Sharing Services
While Napster was shut down after being found guilty of copyright infringement, it caused people to realize the internet could be a viable music source. In the early 2000s, RealNetworks released Rhapsody, the first legal online music service. It is a file streaming service that allows users either limited or unlimited access to a library of streaming music files.
It offers two different options: Rhapsody 25 is their free, limited service allowing users to stream twenty five songs per month. Rhapsody Unlimited allows users to stream unlimited music for a fee of $12.99 per month. The service was groundbreaking upon its release in 2001 as it was the first online service to offer unlimited access to its entire library for a flat monthly fee, and it was the first fully legalized online music service.
While Rhapsody was the first legal online music service, the program that truly has proven the vitality of legal internet downloading is Apple Inc.’s iTunes. First developed in 2001 as just a digital media playing application, it first developed and introduced the iTunes Music Store in 2003.
In the first 18 hours of the iTunes Store’s opening, it sold roughly 275,000 tracks and more than 1,000,000 in its first 5 days. In October 2003 when it was released for Windows, it was downloaded more than 1,000,000 times in the first 3 days and it sold more than 1,000,000 songs. By December 15, 2003, it had sold over 25 million songs.
The iTunes Store, which currently boasts a library of approximately 10,000,000 songs, sells downloadable songs individually at $0.99, or full albums at $9.99, $7.99, or $6.99, depending on the album’s popularity and length. All songs on the iTunes Store are protected with Apple’s Fair Play digital rights management (DRM) system. The DRM prevents songs from being played on anything other than the iTunes interface and Apple’s iPod. In April of 2003 it surpassed Wal-Mart to become the leading music retailer in the United States. The store has sold more than 6 billion songs as of January 2009, “accounting for more than 70% of worldwide online digital music sales.”
The iTunes Music Store features a plethora of information. “New and Noteworthy” albums, “What’s Hot,” “What We’re Listening To,” “What We’re Watching,” “Genius Just For You,” and “Pre-Orders”, among other browsing options, are showcased in the center of their main page, allowing fans to jump into the iTunes music experience effortlessly with just a few clicks.
Along with online downloading services, internet radio has also increased in popularity. Internet radio stations were first developed in the early 1990s, but didn’t reach their peak in popularity until Napster sparked the file-sharing craze in the early 21st century. Since then, internet radio services have greatly increased in popularity. In 2003, it was reported that the total revenue from internet radio services was $49 million. It raised to $500 million by 2006.
Pandora, whose mission is to “only play music you’ll love,” is an internet radio service that utilizes the Music Genome Project. The Music Genome Project is a program that defines songs based on 400 characteristics, ranging from melodic style to tonality to instruments used. Users search for a song they like and Pandora creates a playlist of songs in a similar style. All music is streamed for free from Pandora’s website, Pandora.com. They are not downloadable and cannot be played in any other interface.
Last.fm is a similar internet radio service that uses a music recommendation system known as “Audioscrabbler.” Users build a music profile based on what songs they play on the site’s internet radio service, which features over 3.5 million songs. The Audioscrabbler system recommends bands to the user based what songs they’ve listened to, which are all logged automatically in their music profile.
Myspace and Facebook
Myspace, the social networking website for teens and twentysomethings, was founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. Myspace’s Music section differs from their normal profile pages as it allows artists, many of whom are unsigned or on indie labels, to upload their music, share photos, post tour dates, and essentially keep their fans up to date on band/artist news. The site has gained traction from artists who want to bring attention to their music without the hassle of dealing with controlling record companies. Eight million artists have been discovered by Myspace since its launch of Myspace Music.
In the fall of 2006, Myspace partnered with Snocap, a technology company started by the creator of Napster, Shawn Fanning, to introduce their own music store. The store allows artists, bands, and labels of any size to sell songs on the website for whatever price they want. Snocaps’ database uses an audio fingerprinting technology to prevent people from selling songs they do not own.
Facebook, another popular social networking website, which was founded in 2004 by then-Harvard University students Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, has also jumped on the music-sharing trend.
The site, which has 175 million active users worldwide, recently introduced Fan pages for musicians to use as a means of promotion. Similar to user profiles, a Fan page contains a “Wall” where fans can post comments, various tidbits of information, and photos. The page also features a music player, where fans can listen to 30 second clips of songs and a “Notes” section, where artists write messages updating their fans on their lives, music news, concerts, etc.
Musicians Looking Ahead with the Internet and New Recording Technology
In October 2007, British rock band Radiohead took the music industry by storm when they released their seventh album, In Rainbows, through the internet as a pick-your-price download. Buyers were allowed to choose how much they wanted to pay for the album (paying nothing was allowed). At the time of the album’s release, Radiohead did not have a recording contract, meaning the album was self-released, and all the money made from online sales was profit. It has been reported that 1.2 million purchases were made within the first week of its release. While it was not the bands intent to have such an impact, it has since been considered groundbreaking. The band claims they self-released the record simply because it was complete, and that they had fulfilled their six record deal with EMI and had yet to sign a new deal. Regardless, fans and critics considered it an innovative move, and praised the band for doing something that was in line with their long-standing disapproval of the way the record industry functioned.
Along with Radiohead making strides to use new internet technology to its advantage, numerous musicians have also used recent advances in recording technology to their advantage. Many bands and musicians are now recording outside of recording studios and are able to achieve studio-quality sound. This has helped many bands save money, have more relaxed recording sessions, and has helped smaller-independent labels (labels who have small budgets and minimal resources) gain more popularity.
The Black Keys, a blues-rock duo from Akron, Ohio have released five albums overall, yet only one has been done in a studio. The band’s other four records have been recorded in band member’s garages. The Sword, a heavy metal band from Texas, has recorded both it’s albums in the band’s home. Grizzly Bear, an experimental folk group from New York City, recorded it’s critically acclaimed 2006 album Yellow House in guitarist Ed Droste’s mother’s house in Cape Cod. Folk singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart recorded his debut album, Oh Me Oh My, in his home prior to having any sort of record contract. Banhart later signed a deal with independent label Young God Records who subsequently distributed the record.
What these musicians are proving is that the industry is heading in a direction where major labels may become obsolete. Large budgets are no longer needed to fund recording as musicians are now able to produce professional quality recordings cheaply outside of recording studios. With iTunes and bands like Radiohead proving the internet’s ability to become the most popular form of music distribution, musicians can now release their music inexpensively through the internet, bypassing the funds needed for compact disc or vinyl pressings.
Conclusion:
As a result of the recording and computer-based innovations that have led to iPods, music-sharing, and a new era of self-sufficient musicians, it is clear that the music industry is bigger than ever (just not in any conventional sense). Despite what critics say, the depleted role of record companies has not affected the quantity of music that is currently being produced and is available at the click of a mouse. What’s even better is that the internet has made it easier for bands to distribute their music and book shows in different states. Musician’s are placing a greater emphasis on live performances as that is still the best way to make money, both from the shows themselves and the residual music sales that come from attracting new fans through a live show.
Due to the advancements in reamping and multi-track recording technology, the production of music has been simplified, enabling bands and artists to push musical experimentation to entirely new levels. This will ensure that innovative and ground breaking trends in music are not just limited to the cultural renaissance of the 1960s and 70s, but will play a large part in the modern world and culture.
The ability for bands and artists to directly sell their own music and retain the majority of the profit should help them avoid the typical financial burdens that prematurely ended the careers of many bands and artists prior to these innovations. The future of music is promising, and it is all thanks to the technology that has been evolving since 1877, when John Kruesi heard his own voice spoken back to him on the machine that Thomas Edison invented.
all writing and research done by Joe Dimeck, Stacey Kilpatrick, and Henry Soule
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