Disruptions in Music over Time

[OptimalOptimus]

 

[Max Bogosity]

Sampling, leading to hip hop.

 

[ifrisbee]

FM radio in the 70s moved us away from top 40 to album rock and the rise of radio stations that played only one type of music

MIDI

walkman/IPod/cell phones marked the transformation from communal listening to private listening.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Perception is such an interesting thing. All based on the information you receive of course. There's nothing wrong with your perception but it might not match my perception, and neither might correspond with actual reality.

 

[Basslice]

FM radio in the 70s moved us away from top 40 to album rock and the rise of radio stations that played only one type of music

walkman/IPod/cell phones marked the transformation from communal listening to private listening.

Well, the battery-powered transistor radio preceded all of those by decades. I think that the portable personal choice was unique though. The Walkman definitely should be on the list (a lot smaller than the 80's boombox or even cassette recorder).

Not sure why the technology of FM vs AM changed anything. There were plenty of genre specific AM radio before FM (classical, oldies, big band, sports, etc.) It is true that there was more rock on FM early on, but not clear that the technology enabled it. Seems the high powered AM transmitters had a greater distance reach and FM may have been more localized, but that is just a guess on my part. FM did enable stereo broadcasting earlier and may have had better high fi.

****EDIT**** Reading up on freeform radio, DJs, and FCC rules. Getting late. More on this later...****

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Feel free to modify as needed....

• 
  
• Published Sheet Music Pre-1800
• Growth of Big Bands
• The Phonograph Late 1800's
• Radio Early 1900's
• Growth of Music Labels
• Music Amplification ~1930
• Fading of Big Bands>>>Growth of R&R/Soul
• Television ~1950
• Magnetic Tape Recording ~1950
  
• Musical Synthesis ~1970's
• Proliferation of Cassette Late 1970'S
• Video Music ~1980's
• Fading of Vinyl
• Music Digitzation (CD) ~1980's
• The Internet WWW ~1990's
• File Sharing and Streaming ~2000's
• Fading of CD
• Smart Phone and Tablets ~2000's
• Social Media ~2010's

Most ska still consists of big bands. 9 to 20 or so members with an expansive horn section, keys, organs, and misc percussion.

 

[F5veByF5ve]

CC licensed music (creative commons).

 

[Nashrakh]

Primarily Western music:

Development of tonality
Rise of monophonic music
Rise of polyphonic and secular music
Formalization of music theory
Baroque
Classical
Rise of opera
Professionalization of orchestras and musicians
Loss of royal/elite patronage
Atonal music
Sampling
Home recording
Soundscan
Streaming
COVID

Adding to this, I would say

1) (Equal) Temperament
2) Connected to 1) The invention of the (equal-tempered) Piano. Big one! Now you could play in keys that would sound horrible on a Cembalo or Organ (that's why pieces for either are usually within specific keys).

 

[monkeyfinger]

Tascam Portastudio, Akai MPC2000, and the Roland TR-808.

 

[RichardW]

You forgot:

• use of human voice for music: 30,000 years ago
• creation of musical instruments, approx. 20,000 - 30,000 years ago

of course, these are my best guesses time-wise.

 

[DirtDog]

Most people would say disruptive technologies radically alter how things are done and have a major impact going forward. A comparison would be incremental advancement of known technologies (like one track tape, to two track, two 8 track, etc). So going from hot wax to tape would be disruptive. Going from tape to digital would be disruptive.

All of this is subjective to a certain extent.

That's my working definition of disruptive as well. And a change that you can never "undo".

I like the "four industrial revolutions" lens to contextualize stuff like this. Scoped solely to technology (bypassing changes in taste for different styles of music), here's my short list off the top of my head:

1. Mechanization and Mass Production = move from performed music to recorded music; changed how people procured and consumed mass produced music - from live performance to recording; to me this includes all forms of media (incremental changes) from wax cylinders up to cassettes (all physical, analog copies). Radio is in there somehwere as well - in the early days when performances were broadcast but not necessarily recorded and distributed after the fact.


2. Digitization Part 1 of the music product - from CDs and into the internet as a means of procuring and consuming music.

3. Digitization Part 2 of the music production process and democratization of the means of music producting using software and distributing the product.

These stages are fuzzy, overlapping, not entirely linear but do follow similar paths of disruptions/revolutions in other industries - eg mechanization then mass production then digitization.

What's next? Automation? Some say AI, some say digital-physical convergence. To me, that means some sort of smart automation. I think we're starting to see elements of that at the granular level of "the song" (eg smart playlists, integration of music products with IoT, etc). I evidence of automation in the production of music but that's in fairly finite situations.

Will automation/convergence have a role in creation/production or will this manifest itself on the consumption side? Or both?

Tenchnogical disruptions in instruments is a whole other think piece.

 

[Tom Kinter]

I love this one. I wonder (historically) what the economic impact was. But if you were trying to provide music in certain environments, it probably was a big deal. I will have to Google the date.

p.s. There was a "Player Violin"? Crazy!

Thanks... I actually saw one in a music museum in Oriskany Falls, NY back in the early seventies... now I'll go search that up myself!

 

[Tom Kinter]

Thanks... I actually saw one in a music museum in Oriskany Falls, NY back in the early seventies... now I'll go search that up myself!

Always got to doubt the aging gray cells... it was in Deansboro, NY. "The Musical Museum". Still is, but more of a commercial enterprise than I remember. I was there working on their tracker pipe organ (Summer job for a guy who roved around upstate NY repairing and revoicing).
I think it was one of these:

 

[MYLOWFREQ]

You forgot "MP3 Players" in between "Audio CD" and "Smart Phones".

 

[JoshS]

Let me illustrate a couple of examples.

Let's say you are a music publisher in 1878 and you make money by selling sheet music. You hire people to run your printing presses, transcribe music, sales people to sell the music, lawyers to catch infringers, etc. Then some guy named Edison comes along with a phonograph and starts selling recorded music and eventually people stop buying your sheet music. The industry has been disrupted. Maybe you were smart and started signing artists and got rich selling records. Maybe you rode it out and lost your shirt. That is a disruptive technology.

Lets say you are a company that presses vinyl in the 70's. You sell LP records and sleeves. You've invested millions in the technology and are making big $$. Maybe you spent your whole life learning how to edit and master for LPs. Then Philips comes along with optical recording (CD). Maybe you invest in the new technology - maybe not. By the late 80's no one is buying LPs anymore. That is a technology disruption.

Yeah, per CC and all working definitions, these are great examples. In B-school, they love to use Uber and AirBNB. When I was in b-school (dating myself here) "Blue Ocean" was also pretty vogue at the time, and I've always been more comfortable with it. Discussion for another thread, but I had an interesting dinner with a fellow alum and he loved disruption. Of course he had a $17MM exit, but not in a business / industry I'd call particularly disruptive personally. "Disruption" in the Uber and AirBNB is great, I guess, if you're making money on that side, but does it advance society in some good and meaningful way? Eh.... OTOH, there are truly innovative people / companies that are doing something totally different but doesn't immediately put the sheet music guy or vinyl pressing guy out of business inside of a decade. A few have been mentioned here.

I saw someone else mention it, but Napster was pretty disruptive in my mind and loved JohnnyPustular's post.

 

[F5veByF5ve]

Broadway Theater (1732)

 

[Tom Kinter]

@Michedelic So would you put acoustic to electronic recording before the influence of radio in the timeline?

Also, could you explain to me the difference? I like your suggestions, BTW.

****EDIT NOTE**** I think I understand the acoustic vs electronic now. I inherited a bunch of 1890 - 1920 78's. They were recorded through a funnel into the hot wax. Amplification came next. Good point.

This suggests another possible turning point in your excellent timeline... that would say 1948: the advent of 33 1/3rpm LPs vs 78s... this had immediate and profound impact on especially jazz and classical recording, performing and composing... up to that point 5 minutes was the limit for a side. Similar impact to what the Latham Loop did for the early movies.

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

Feel free to modify as needed....

• 
  
• Published Sheet Music Pre-1800
• Growth of Big Bands
• The Phonograph Late 1800's
• Radio Early 1900's
• Growth of Music Labels
• Music Amplification ~1930
• Fading of Big Bands>>>Growth of R&R/Soul
• Television ~1950
• Magnetic Tape Recording ~1950
  
• Musical Synthesis ~1970's
• Proliferation of Cassette Late 1970'S
• Video Music ~1980's
• Fading of Vinyl
• Music Digitzation (CD) ~1980's
• The Internet WWW ~1990's
• File Sharing and Streaming ~2000's
• Fading of CD
• Smart Phone and Tablets ~2000's
• Social Media ~2010's

The list omits the most important impact on music that affects everyone on TalkBass: COVID-19. It has essentially destroyed the ability to create (and listen to) live music. As vaccines are gradually administered and risk of infection drops, live music will eventually come back. However, most of the old players here will never again perform in a band because their projects have stalled or disappeared, some players have died, skills have tanked, and most important: performance venues have disappeared permanently.

Personally, the likelihood of all this happening makes me feel sad. I'm trying to figure out how to keep the energy for making music high, but it's very tough right now. I'm seriously exploring ways to stay involved with music that entail zero in-person interaction with other musicians. Long term, that would be one of the biggest impacts to music that has ever occurred.

 

[JoshS]

That's my working definition of disruptive as well. And a change that you can never "undo".

I like the "four industrial revolutions" lens to contextualize stuff like this. Scoped solely to technology (bypassing changes in taste for different styles of music), here's my short list off the top of my head:

1. Mechanization and Mass Production = move from performed music to recorded music; changed how people procured and consumed mass produced music - from live performance to recording; to me this includes all forms of media (incremental changes) from wax cylinders up to cassettes (all physical, analog copies). Radio is in there somehwere as well - in the early days when performances were broadcast but not necessarily recorded and distributed after the fact.

2. Digitization Part 1 of the music product - from CDs and into the internet as a means of procuring and consuming music.

3. Digitization Part 2 of the music production process and democratization of the means of music producting using software and distributing the product.

I love this too. In the world of lean manufacturing / supply chain, the holy grail is 1:1.

Old & outmoded: I practice. Go to recording studio. Record. Get mixed. Master tracks get sent (or digitalized). Sent / recorded on to vinyl / tape / CD / whatever. Gets shipped to record store. Someone drives over and buys. So many steps.

1:1: I sit in my basement, record into a digital interface and you enjoy it that evening. (Enjoyment of anything I'd personally record being highly debatable! ) I think COVID has brought us really pretty close to that, although we were mostly there beforehand too. We've had very interesting threads about how good home recording can be, comparatively speaking and is that last 10% worth it.

 

[DirtDog]

The list omits the most important impact on music that affects everyone on TalkBass: COVID-19. It has essentially destroyed the ability to create (and listen to) live music. As vaccines are gradually administered and risk of infection drops, live music will eventually come back. However, most of the old players here will never again perform in a band because their projects have stalled or disappeared, some players have died, skills have tanked, and most important: performance venues have disappeared permanently.

Personally, the likelihood of all this happening makes me feel sad. I'm trying to figure out how to keep the energy for making music high, but it's very tough right now. I'm seriously exploring ways to stay involved with music that entail zero in-person interaction with other musicians. Long term, that would be one of the biggest impacts to music that has ever occurred.

My feeling in this (not supported by actual evidence) is that Covid only accelerated or amplified an already declining market for live music. My sense is that the live performance market has slowly been dwindling in favour of recorded music for most of the 20th century and all of the 21st century. There was a time when 100% of music was consumed through live performance. There may be a time when 0% might be consumed through live performance. Those are the boundaries at either end. We are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum right now and *arguably* moving ever so closer to the 0% end. I'm not saying music is dying - very much the opposite. But consumption of music is moving away from the public realm and into the private realm- aided by technology advances in mechanization, mass production and digitization.

One future scenario for me is some sort of digital performance using avatars, virtual/augmented reality, holograms, etc as a way to consume a live and/or recorded performance. That's the physical-digital convergence I was talking about. ABBA did something like this a few years ago and apparently had a Covid era virtual hologram tour. That's disruptive! And expensive, no doubt!

It's too bad that real-time online musical collaboration is limited by choke points in technology (or physical limits of said technology), we were as a group (musicians) clearly ready to try it!

Like William Gibson said - the future is here already, it's just not very evenly distributed!