1877 – Wax Cylinders & Phonographs

Thomas Edison was one of the inventors to overcome the challenge of storing sound. Before the 1870s, no way existed to store sound and later play it back. The entire human experience with music before the late 19th century was isolated to live performances.

Edison’s phonographic cylinders were the first commercial medium for storing music. Alexander Graham Bell improved on this analog storage medium, creating a wax cylinder engraved in musical recordings. These cylinders and the associated playback technology, phonographs, became available in 1889, but it took a few years before people started purchasing them for use in their homes. One phonograph manufacturer, the Volta Gramophone company, would later become the recording giant we know today as Columbia records.

Even then, phonographs and phonographic cylinders were not widespread. It was still an event to have one of these in your home, and you might invite friends and family to enjoy the experience and show off this new form of listening.

A few years later, the format began shifting away from cylinders towards a flatter disk shape. This format didn’t result in major improvements in sound quality, it was a poor fidelity recording with lots of artifacts and scratching. But the flat discs were easier to manufacture and could be produced and distributed with ease. Shellac discs were initially 5-inches across and single-sided, but soon the discs expanded to 10 inches and were double-sided. Consumers began collecting stacks of discs, growing their personal music libraries.

1931 – The Age of Vinyl

In 1931, the first ever long-form vinyl record was released by the record label RCA Victor. Vinyl would continue to reign as the most widespread music storage and reproduction method between 1948 and 1988.

Polyvinyl chloride became the main record material in the 1940s, after which records were often referred to simply as ‘vinyl.’ Records store music on a flat disc with a groove that spirals around the disc. Modulations in this groove store the music, which is then played back when a record player needle moves through the spiral. It’s an analog storage format, much like the wax cylinders, because the mechanical energy from the sound waves is converted into electrical energy sent to the amplifier and speakers.

During the age of vinyl, the music industry became a major commercial success. Record stores opened across the United States and Europe. Starting in the 1950s, the younger generations became the demographics with the most power within the industry. They flocked to new sounds and experiences to separate themselves from the music of their parents, created by hit artists like Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

This was the first generation that could start curating a music taste and style of their own, thanks to the mass market production of vinyl. Vinyl listening booths within record stores offered a way for people to discover new types of music. Then consumers could choose a record to take home and add to their own collection.‍

1964 – Emerging Electro-Magnetic Revolution

Even though cassettes never surpassed vinyl in sales, it’s still an important medium to mention. Magnetic formats like 8tracks (1964) and later compact cassettes (the late 1970s) brought musical choice into our vehicles. Most car manufacturers included an 8track or compact cassette player in addition to the radio. Consumers could now bring their own personal music tastes on the road, following their daily lives.

Magnetic tape contains electrical audio signals that can be played back when it is read by a playback head that converts the magnetic information back to electrical signals to be sent to the amplifier and speakers. Record labels could distribute music with pre-recorded cassettes, or people could make their own takes with custom song selections.

These custom tapes, known as mixtapes, were especially popular in the 1980s. Mixtapes were a form of expression among younger consumers, allowing listeners to curate a compilation of songs in a specific order tailored to match a specific mood or theme.

The Sony Walkman, released in 1979, further contributed to the success of mixtapes and continued to move our interactions with music outside their traditional ‘realms’. Consumers could now listen to their personal music choices in public while they went about their day. Music became an accompaniment to our daily lives and was no longer ‘tethered to a destination.’ The Walkman was an instant hit, with Sony selling out its original 30,000 Walkman and eventually reaching 200 million sales.

1982 – Beginnings of the Digital Era

While vinyl and cassettes were a commercial success, the music industry couldn’t have anticipated the influence and success of the compact disc. The first CDs were manufactured in late 1982 but wouldn’t gain widespread popularity for a few more years.

CDs store music in a fashion similar to vinyl records, on a disc, except it’s a digital storage format, and the spiral track causes light to diffract that is then read by a laser beam. But CDs require the consumer to take special care handling the disc. You can’t hold the disc in your hand as you can with a vinyl record, or you risk damaging the optical information encoded by tiny bumps on the surface.

Compact discs sales grew to incredible numbers because they were manufactured quickly and reliably and distributed worldwide. CDs could display album artwork right on the medium, a first. And the fidelity of recordings played from CDs was better than in any previous format.

2001 – Compressed Music Age

During the early 2000s, CD sales still dominated the music industry, but 2001 marked a turning point for the future of the music industry. Steve Jobs released the iPod in late 2001, and its storage capacity blew people away. The iPod could store 1,000 songs and play music for 10 hours straight. Cassettes (30-60 minutes per side) or CDs (80 minutes) were limited to only a handful of songs. With Apple’s iPod, you could store your entire music library in a single device! Apple would go on to sell 22.5 million iPods and 100 million iPod Touch units.

Consumer listening habits were no longer constrained by discrete playback formats. Instead, you could load an iPod with all your favorite songs, purchased for $1 a piece from iTunes, and carry your musical library wherever you went. There was no need to keep CDs or cassettes in separate areas, like your home, car, and CD player. You didn’t have to preselect the music you wanted to bring with you. All you had to do was open the iPod and select any song.

MP3 compression produces so gnarly audio artifacts that reduce the listening pleasure. MP3s were actually a step back in quality compared to CDs. Consumers didn’t choose MP3s because of their quality. They flocked to MP3s because of the convenience and the ability to store more music than ever with these poor-quality digital files.

People loved to download ringtones from their new smartphones and listen to MP3s on their home computers or iPods. It was incredible for consumers that had grown up needing a physical playback format in their hands for each album or song. Now music was stored in these little files you could never hold or directly interact with.

2006 – Emergence of the Streaming Services

With streaming services, selecting and then purchasing (or downloading, in the case of MP3s) an album or song to add to your library is almost completely obsolete. There’s no need to purchase anything or make discrete decisions about your music library. Consumers no longer curate a music library over time. Instead, they have the entire library of music at their fingertips.

The most popular streaming service today, with 456 million active users, was launched in 2006. Spotify had limited success in the first few years (although it reached it’s first million users in 5 months!) because of listening limits. Free listeners could only listen to 10 hours of steaming per month and play each song 5x. When Spotify removed its limitations for free listeners in 2012, the service began to grow rapidly.

Spotify has since focused heavily on machine learning and listening algorithms. Users’ listening habits are used to create curated playlists. This has further removed listeners from the album and record form. Instead of selecting an artist or album, music is served to consumers without any discrete choice or action.

Thankfully, with the advancing computer power and internet speeds worldwide, streaming services are on the move from the poor quality MP3, AAC, and Ogg in the direction to the Lossless file formats, capable of storing music in high fidelity.

The Shaping of Personal Music Listening Habits

Before the 2000s, personal listening habits were shaped by the physical constraints of a specific playback format. You had to make concrete decisions about what records and albums to buy, what artists to favor, and how to develop your music library. The analog nature of vinyl offered an enjoyable sensorial listening experience but was kept to the confines of the home or record store. Music was appreciated in a larger storytelling format through albums.

Later, listening started expanding into personal vehicles with the advent of 8 tracks and cassettes. Now your library was split, you’d keep some cassettes in your car while keeping the rest at home. You could rotate these selections from time to time. And with the Sony Walkman, the listening experience was fully untethered from our homes.

Magnetic tapes could fit more songs than a vinyl record, allowing artists to expand their storytelling capabilities into an even longer format. Consumers started creating their own playlists, called mixtapes, realizing that certain themes or moods could be drafted in a specific order to carry the listener through a different experience.

With CDs, you could enjoy all the advancements of magnetic tapes but in a higher fidelity and more accessible format. CDs were the most commercially successful format for the music industry. CDs were also the last physical format for an individual album, and the last playback medium you could hold in your hand.

Consumers were amazed by the digital format of MP3s in the early 2000s. Instead of buying entire albums, we started purchasing single songs from MP3 websites or Apple’s iTunes. While EPs have always existed in some manner, this was the beginning of the end for the album. As songs started decoupling from albums, the artist’s intention was stripped away. But consumers happily traded that experience for the easy access and incredible storage capacity of MP3 players like the revolutionary iPod.

We continue to choose convenience today. Many consumers don’t actually own music these days. Instead, they pay for a streaming subscription, like Apple Music, or access music for free using Spotify, listening to advertising between songs. People curate a music library of our specific tastes and favorites in a ‘liked’ list. We ‘like’ songs to return to later or allow Apple Music or Spotify to make intelligent music recommendations.  These music recommendations through machine learning shape our discovery of the new music, allowing seamless access to the similar music.

However, even with the technological changes over the last 150 years, it’s important to remember that the ‘why’ we listen to music hasn’t. We still listen to music because it offers an immediate way to experience the highs and lows of other emotions and moods. Music is capable of changing our own moods when we need it most. Music is entertaining, moving, and tells stories that key into the experiences and emotions we all share.