JOSHUA LANE
Was it artists or technologies that
have evolved , creating, recording, manufacturing and the distribution of
mainstream music over the past century?
University of Plymouth
School of Arts and Media
Digital Art and Technology
Was it artists or technologies that
have evolved recording, manufacturing and the distribution of mainstream music
over the past century?
Joshua Lane
April 2013
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Hannah
Drayson, for her support and guidance she has shown me throughout my
dissertation writing.
Title Page
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
Information Page and
Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………….… 2
Contents Page ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..
3
Abstract
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4
Introduction
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….... 5
The Genre of Blues Music- 18th
Century to 1960 ……………………………………………………………………………... 7
The Birth of Rock n’ Roll, 1960-
1970 ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9
Synth Pop- 1970- 1993
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………. 11
Counterculture and Grunge Music -
1985-1995 …………………………………………………………………………….. 14
Living in the Age of Marketability …………………………………………………………………………………………………..
16
The Business of Music ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
18
Revolution of the Internet
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 20
File Sharing/P2P
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
Old and New Recording Techniques ……………………………………………………………………………………………….
24
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
27
Abstract
How has technology changed the music industry? Has culture, economics,
marketing, advertising, publicity, technology all contributed to the evolution
of how music is distributed among us? One of the ways we can look at this is by
returning 100 years ago to where recording music was only available to the
musically talented and wealthy of us through acoustical recording through
Phonautograph and Gramophones, and all the way to the recording of today, where
any one of us can be a recording artist through the ease of technological
access and availability that equipment can be easily reached by us. How certain
music scenes and genres have had on it, such as the 1990’s Grunge Seattle
explosion scene or the 1970’s electronic pop era. Or as further back as the
1940’s that recording was being widely created throughout the world for
communication purposes being sent via telephone lines and radio. This
dissertation will aim to discuss the evolution of musical creation,
distribution and recording, and if we can say that a portion of the reasons
have helped developed distribution in what is has become today.
Introduction
Music evolution
represents the ideology and basic thought development of society, be it
economical, social (religious, racial, gender, class) technological, or even
culturally, there is a definite connection between how society evolves and
musical progression. As I will talk about later in this dissertation all
throughout human history you can see how
music changes and evolves according to society’s needs, our wants, our ideals,
our expectations of government and power, organised religion, the social
classes or even memes.
In this
dissertation, I aim to outline how over the last century music has transformed
to suit society’s ideals, ethics and morals. How thanks to technology, this
change is achieved to a tremendous scale, how technology has developed and
re-formed all of the musical industry, including the recording studio, music
labels, how the internet has revolutionized distribution of music and all the
way down to the individual musician.
Using various
research methods I aim to discuss that over the last century if it is the
musician(s) or technology that has shaped the transformation and importance of
music in everyday society. Looking back
60 years ago there has been major change in technology and the availability of
it, economic growth has giving us ease of access to develop technology to our
own personal wants and needs. Technological development has been a significant part
of why we use certain technologies to create, record, distribute or listen to
music, either from traditional ways as going out and buying a CD or a vinyl. Or
downloading an mp3 (album or song), streaming, or downloading it illegally via
one of the many pirate sites on the internet. Many factors drive us to
experience music in our own unique that way that overall has defined us as an
individual and as a society and which in turn drives us to express ourselves in
a multitude of musical ways. The writer Winner writes that
“The
things we call ‘technologies’ are ways of building order in our world. Many
technical devices and systems important in everyday life contain possibilities
for many different ways of ordering human activity. Consciously or not,
deliberately or inadvertently, societies chose structures for technologies that
influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel, consume and so
forth over a very long time…The issues that divide or unite people in society
are settled not only in the institutions and practices of politics proper, but
also, and less obviously, in tangible arrangements of steel and concrete, wires
and transistors, nuts and bolts.” (Winner, Do Artefacts Have Politics?, p5)
As Winner says we
are building order and construct through technology and higher learning, social
issues that divide people are talked about, worked out and settled with social
growth and development. Technology has brought us an incredible way as a species
over the last century, but as a society we are still held back by our human
weaknesses, that is why we choose to put our trust in financing and building
incredible and wonderful new technologies. We live in an age of ‘knowledge is
power’, creating, constructing and designing new technologies that interact so
we can interact with each other and so we can reach every human on the planet
without even leaving our homes, that we can exchange thoughts, ideas, works of
arts, have meaningful conversations with a completely stranger and even distribute
music all at the blink of an eye.
But because of
human agency, do we give these technologies their own lives? Not to be
determined by us, but by us being determined as a culture by them. This is why
controversy can be thrust upon new technologies of having conflicting
ideologies of identity or power with their human users. We choose structure of
technology above what as race deem applicable to create, and we let technology
create us, instead of the other way around. Technology is only as powerful as
we perceive it to be, such as words. Would the internet not be such a massive
institution today if it was not believed that this technology had such a
potential and received the funding it was given back in the 60’s? The sudden expansion and boom of the commercialism of this technology in
the 1990’s suddenly has made it a part of our everyday lives. Technology (like mostly
everything nowadays) is only worth as much as its potential commercialism.
Certain groups of musicians
have taken it upon themselves to become fully absorbed in culture and politics
and technology, to sing about the struggles of their time, or to bring
attention to events that are happening either where they are or globally.
Spreading their words through technological connections of the internet or the
television or the radio, these technologies have been historically grounded,
forever being a part of human culture.
Certain groups of
musician’s have been responsible for the change that has enveloped music over
the last century. From The Beatles and their own brand of ‘musical revolution’
in the 60’s, to the 80’s anti establishment anger of the punks, from the
Southern American blues and jazz of the 30’s and 40’s to the media
marketability of modern day pop music, I will aim to discuss was it musician's
or technology that has most significantly affected the music industry.
The Genre of
Blues Music- 19th Century to 1960
Whilst back in the
1960’s, when bands were scrambling to find their sound (some form of repressed,
lower class angst at the government for 20 years of post two world war economic
depressions) blues was already a well established genre, culturally and
musically. One form or another had been around for hundreds of years,
originating from Africa. It wasn’t until the 19th century that white
people were introduced to this style of music, when the slave industry boomed.
Global growth quadrupled on an industrial scale off the back of this industry
of buying and selling human beings. The emotions of blues came from the slaves
who sung in the fields or on the farms to keep their spirits high, these were
the songs of pain and suffering, the real torment of the common day slave 200
years ago. The depression and deep sorrow was how they communicated through
singing which established the dark undertone of blues.
It wasn’t until the end half of the 19th
century where a black musical scene started to spring up and grabbed the
attention of mainstream music. Jazz bars and black theatres started springing
up everywhere, white folk were immerse
in black culture, artists such as Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Art
Blakey and Robert Johnson were gaining strong foot holds in modern day pop
culture. Their music would be played on a standard acoustic guitar, often with
a backing band including a brass section, bass and drums, and maybe another
guitarist.
It wasn’t until
the 1920’s/30’s where guitar manufactures started to experiment with electrical
guitars, they would add pickups underneath the strings and outputted through an
amp. Electro-acoustic guitars, lap steels and mandolins had been widely
available for some time, musicians have been wiring up their instruments
looking for a greater sound and for cleaner control from their instrument.
Experimentation from companies such as Fender and Rickenbacker gained no notice
until the 1940’s where mass production of Fender guitar’s changed the face of
popular music forever. Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby had been experimenting and
creating electrical guitars for the last 15 years and finally created the first
Fender Telecaster. It was a durable guitar with a clean sound and a clean tone
which became incredible popular with the Chicago and New York Blues scene, mass
manufacturing meant cheap to sell meaning cheap to buy, so this guitar became
the most popular guitar because of its price tag.
Along with the
evolution of the guitar came the evolution of the amp, they were only ever as
big as cereal boxes and had incredibly crude electronics but they got the job
done. Through the 50’s, Fender produced uncomplicated yet reliable deigns and
products of the amplifier, the tubes that powered amps became more stable which
meant the power ratings improved dramatically.
Recording a record
had transformed radically over 30 years as well, bands or musicians would play
all at once into a large wooden horn which would pick up vibrations, and the
sound waves were then transferred to a steel needle that etched a single
continuous groove in a flat wax disc (vinyl). That was roughly unchanged for
decades, but modern advances such as the invention of the first electric
microphone and the use of electricity, recording on to magnetic tape replaced
other recording media, this was an important invention for music as it improved the fidelity of
the recorded audio signal by increasing the effective linearity of the
recording medium. ‘Makeshift’ studio’s were popping up over the US and the UK,
in hotel rooms, in bathrooms, in basements and living rooms, this was so
recording artists could capture the soul of live blues and feel that they
aren’t just being subjugated to studios by record labels, artists felt they
should still live and be the embodiment of early blues. But unfortunately this became
a quick fad which faded quickly and wouldn’t again be picked up until the 80’s
of the birth of modern day punk.
The Birth of
Rock n’ Roll, 1960- 1970
‘Everyone dressed up but nothing changed’-
(John Lennon, Revolution in the Head, p2)
Whilst the black
community has been gaining significant ground in music over the last 30 to 40
years, white culture had been finding it hard to create their own musical
identity. Even though such artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Buddy
Holly started to come in the limelight in a big way, but as musicians they
failed to create their own sound, and had been using black music through their
early careers, such as jazz and blues failing to create their own sound.
White musicians
were failing to gain a foothold in the record market that the music scene had
seen from black dominance over the last 40 years. While the rock and roll
movement lived and died out in the last 50’s, the youth were being distracted
by the ideas of a better society, conformism had become universal and America
forgot the birth of rock and roll and were virtually unaware of how to be
‘hip’. The Beatles became ambassadors
for reviving the dead rock and roll movement of the early 50’s, mixed with
‘black energy of the 40’s jazz and blues ‘and bringing it into white
culture. The Beatles had become a
landmark for how every typical rock and roll band played. All using a
combination of a 30 and 60 watt amp (2X12 speakers) with a separate PA for
vocals, amps had come a long way over the last 10 years, giving out a massive
sound and thanks to the Beatles they were used for a clean sound in Rock and
Roll. It wasn’t until 1964 that Rock and
Roll found it’s true and signature sound. Dave Davis of The Kinks purchased a
little Epilco amp from a spare parts shop, sliced the speaker cone with a razor
blade giving his guitar a very overpowering driven sound, which was later
coined ‘Overdrive’. This sound was used on The Kinks break through song’ You
Really Got Me’ and essentially cementing Rock and Roll as genre. This new sound
caused an extreme reaction from the conservative, Victorian mind set of the
older generations, this was such a unique sound that most people did not how to
react to it. The Kinks song had significant radio plays and they gained
Television slots left right and centre, the young generation latched onto this
new sound and these new bands that were emerging but technology had sparked an
outrage from older generations of musicians, quoting that technology kills
imagination and creativity.
This song has
spiked a serious outrage from the electronic engineering community who dominated
radio, recording and TV, these establishments were still full of an older, out
of touch generation that was not used to hearing something different in pop
culture. The San Francisco, New Orleans,
New York black music scene had not crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the ears of UK
mainstream pop, and was greeted with discontent and was not welcomed in a currently
behind United Kingdom. Many amps that
were created in the 50’s and 60’s were poorly made and sounded terrible to play
live, this loud over amplified sound equated to it being known as the rock n’
roll sound. This sound came out of circumstance, not out of evolution from
manufacturing companies, the technical fault was never looked into by companies
because the sound had become so iconic with influential bands such as Led
Zeppelin and The Who, that rock and roll fans and artists just accepted it. The
musician Patti Smith sums up the Rock and Roll movement
“We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a
mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and
roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of
spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it
falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle,
finance, and vapid technical complexity.” – (Patti Smith,
Just Kids, p245)
Synth Pop- 1970-
1993
It reached the
70’s and Britain was entering a modern age, old style Victorian buildings were
being demolished and replaced by great concrete structures designed to house
hundreds of people. The industrial
Britain was being washed away by punk music, labour government and social and
architectural reconstructions. The younger lower class were fed up of being
pushed around by higher classes, and were gaining a sort of teen angst which
came out through punk music rebelling against their parents’ generation whom were still in the mindset of
more traditional social values.
After all the many
years of underground punk movements that had happened and all the scene had to
show for it were bands of angry impressionable youth screaming into a microphone
and thrashing around on a guitar. The movement never showed any sign of moving
on, content to stay in the underground bars and the basements of homes.
Electronic music arrived and had come to stay in Britain, it was taking
audiences by storm and it began to personify Britain at the time. Through TV
and films, people were being shown new and exciting technologies that could
create these never before heard sounds. Through science fiction programs such
as Star Trek, Blake 7 and the globally popular Dr.Who, the cinematic and
television music scene was being dominated by these orchestral electronic
sounds.
In 1970, a band by
the name of Kraftwerk emerged from Germany whose entire line up played all
electronic instruments, including a Hammon L-100 Organ, an ARP 2600 semi modular synthesiser, an Eventide H-910 Harmonizer, s Mattel Synsonics electronic drum and a Roland 100m modular synthesiser. These instruments
were adapted from already made synthesisers and create completely by hand by
the band.
These were guys
who would turn up to gigs in suits and slick backed hair, they saw the rough,
outcast look of the punk to be old fashioned and pre dated. Electronic
instruments were not cheap back then, and since Kraftwerk had burst onto the
music scene, fans all wanted to build or buy their own electronic instruments;
this had sprung a revolution against the dominated glam and the punk rockers of
the time. The musically untalented could now just pick up a synthesizer and
mash any keys together and create a unique and futuristic sound. You didn’t need complete bands anymore to get
anywhere in music, computers were making that obsolete, you learnt 3 chords to
be in a punk band, you only had to push one button on a synthesizer to be in a
Synth Pop band. Whilst Punk music inspired musicians to just get up and do it
(a DIY attitude towards music); Synth Pop took the attitudes of punk and added
different elements to their music. The anti hero image of punk had come and
gone, now came the birth of Synth Pop.
It was in 1973 when Korg manufactured the first
affordable synthesizer, the Korg 700s, and this cost roughly £250. Musicians
started to put down their fender guitars and come to the sound of the future.
This gave musicians to experiment with different sounds for a single piece of
equipment, not just getting the same twangy, driven sound of a guitar, but
getting a rich combination of drive, pitch, bend, and creating techniques such
as subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis, wavetable synthesis, frequency modulation synthesis, phase distortion synthesis, physical modelling synthesis and sample-based synthesis.
Bands like The
Human League and Ultravox were popping up over the country and gaining wide
spread fandom, from the North all the way down to London. But for years Synth
Pop was still failing to gain any recognition from mainstream record labels,
this was until a young London boy by the name of Gary Numan appeared on Top of
the Pops in 1979; he quickly became the pin up poster boy for British Synth
Pop. This then strung together a many successful years of Synth Pop dominating all
other aspects of music, other musical experiments started to come out of it,
mainly a technique called ‘sampling’.
Sampling had been around for a good time before but it came widely
popular with Synth Pop artists, taken something natural like a rock and
recording the sound of bashing the rock against a wall, then tweaking it, or
looping the sound and adding it to a musical piece.
It was around the early 90’s where Synth Pop started
to decline; the artists said they had achieved everything they wanted to, by
bringing a new genre of music in the public’s eye, by creating something that
had not been previous possible through technology and electronics. The music
scene had become saturated with the same type of Synth band and had started to
become unpopular again, the guitar was started to be picked up again and such
bands as Oasis and Radiohead rose to stardom. But Synth pop is still very much
alive today and the synthesiser will be one of the most important instruments
in music history.
‘When music technology takes the place of musicianship, it's time to pull the
plug.’- (Robert Brown, Wired for Sound: Engineering and
Technologies in Sonic Cultures, p14)
This quote from
Robert Brown shows that a lot of people weren’t very happy with the
technological advance had made in music. Musicians of the 60’s and before were
worried that technology would take the soul away from music, if it was all mass
produced and lacked artistic integrity. But technology fuelled Synth Pop and
many genres that have lead up today, technology enhances music, not represses
it. Musicians who have embraced technology and taken advantage of the gateway
have been the musicians who were successful, part of the bands that have made
music history, and will be forever remembered a great pioneer of their chosen
pathway. Tom Morello, for example (from the heavy rock band ‘Rage Against the
Machine), one of the first rock guitarists to fully tap into new sounds for
guitarists everywhere using various guitar pedals and switches on his massive
pedal board. He was the first to use the kill switch on the guitar in a solo,
which sparked back lashes from a lot of guitarists, but hailed as genius by
others. Tom Morello isn’t the most skilful guitarist around but one of the most
energetic, one of the most innovative, and especially one of the most talented
guitarists to have entered the world of music
Counterculture
and Grunge Music (1985-1995)
Creative movements often start in two different ways, they either are
created organically throughout its birth and development, or they are
deliberately created coming with a purpose, a set of rules and instructions,
and a name.
The birth of rock n’ roll came organically throughout time, being a
combination of jazz, blues and country music, the development grew over time
given out a unique flavour for listeners compared to other genres of music, but
grunge is a different matter. It was created with a clear set of simple
instructions, have angst, and play music about it. It grew off of the back of
punk from the 70’s and 80’s, kids whose parents were rockers and punks were fed
up with voice of the older generation. Over time punk had grown with an
ideology and background, something that it didn’t start with and something it
didn’t need. But like most music, punk just became another conformist music
against the system and had died out leading into the 90’s. It was cool to start
playing guitar again; bands like Oasis and Pulp were starting to spring up in
the spaces that the bands of Synth pop had left behind. But across the Atlantic
stirred a new sound, a bigger crunchier sound, a sound that had never been
heard before, a sound that started in the basements across the city of Seattle,
the sound of the 90’s American youth- Grunge.
Unlike their musical predecessors, grungers felt they didn’t need
technology to enhance their sound, instead they would play loud and aggressive,
playing dirty and without a care, hence the coined term ‘dirty guitar’;
referring to the sound of the grunge guitar. Although technology was never an
answer for the progression of their sound, musicians did take advantage of
homemade recording studios. Only before
then you had to find a bit of money from somewhere (or hope to sign to a record
label) to hope to ever get a chance to record. But now, with technology
becoming widely available through tape recorders, cheaper electronic equipment,
and generally the everyday use of recording equipment lying around, musicians
could do it on a regular basis. Ever since then, it's only ever gotten easier.
The grungers were one of the first groups to take advantage of this.
In the age of big entertainment, musicians, designers, underground labels
had created a shadow business built upon a network of promotion, distribution
and live music; this had created entrepreneurial people who wanted to wage war
against the record labels and they somehow emerged as the victor.
After the release of the iconic album ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana in 1991,
grunge caught the eye of the mainstream media and suddenly began to bloom throughout
Seattle, teenagers from the US to the UK wanted to be like Kurt Cobain and play
his music. Teens of the 90’s said that grunge music was their voice for teenage
frustration (like all their predecessors before them), and wanting to become something more than what
they were, but like all music scenes that had been adopted by the younger
generation it just came along at the right time. There was an uneven hole that
had been made by over use of 90’s indie music that the younger generations
rejected, so when grunge music ( an irritated, mad, emotional sound) came
along, teens all over the world latched onto that and said it was their time,
their voice to be heard. Nirvana’s
commercial success and the subsequent popularity of grunge music had
transformed Seattle from an isolated working class city in the north west of
the US, to a beacon for art, technology and music. Hipsters from all over were
flocking up north to experience this underground scene and to experience the
sound that had made famous this dockyard city.
‘The combination
of there being software jobs, the combination of things like Starbucks getting
national attention, then the music scene, made anyone who was 22 years old, who
had just left college and was hip, move to Seattle’- (Howard
Schultz cited in 20 Years Later, Seattle Music Scene Still
Channels Spirit Of Nirvana, p1)
The media turned Kurt Cobain into the massive icon that had left far
too soon,’ a candle blown out in the wind’,
and ironically through Kurt’s suicide note that is what he was trying to
avoid. Being a flavour of the month icon that will eventually fade out over
time, but he never thought that his music would last the ages and be past down
to the next generation and the generation after that. And thus Kurt killing
himself cemented his own image through music history creating the icon that he
is today. This created the way for many
musicians to take what Kurt had left behind and tried to create something
purely unique that he had done, but still to today nothing has even come close
to having the bench mark that Kurt Cobain had left; he created the sound, the
sound created the city, the sound created bands and infected mainstream pop
culture, mainstream media took Kurt’s life.
Living in the
Age of Marketability
After the rise and
fall of so many genres of music over the last century, we seem to have fallen
on one timeless never ending beast that has endured throughout human history;
marketability. Record labels aren’t interested in music anymore, they aren’t
interested in what bands sing about or what they represent, they only care if
they can sell records and turn a profit.
It is a story
commonly heard through the music industry, artists struggling to gain a
foothold in this enormous beast that is the music industry. For unsigned
artists the internet can offer a fantastic opportunity to reach a large
audience, for a chance to join the digital distribution age. But due to the
amount of internet traffic every day single day and the possibility of being
buried underneath a mountain of thousands of other potential acts looking to
get recognised can be quite possible. Though the internet has become a
tremendous revolution for budding artists to stray away from traditional
distribution, many artists still look to become signed to a record label for
its many networking opportunities and stepping up in the music ladder. Even getting
signed to a label for an album deal or just for a year can have successful
effects that can boost you further than bands who are looking to go at it alone
and feeling their music shouldn’t have a price, to be beaten down by the way a
business producer would want you to sound, or how he can change you to be more
marketable. Canadian singer songwriter Jane Siberry quotes
‘I think we're returning to more of the original vibration of
music and creativity through the removal of this distortion called the music
industry. That's where we're heading. And it'll cut out a lot of music if
people ever expected to make money’- (Jane Siberry, quoted from Brainy Quotes)
Looking through
the pass century, marketability never became an issue with artists until the
digital age came along. The freedom of the internet, of new and exciting
technologies and of the general attitude towards production labels has shifted
much mentality of not wanting to b\e a part of the music industry. Many bands
such as Alien Ant Farm, Protest the Hero and The Skints, are beginning to move
away from record labels and setting a trend for other bands and artists to
follow suit. To record, produce and
market their own music, as well as putting on their own shows, bringing out
their own merchandise with full creative control;. The rock band Paramore was
given only 13 weeks to write, rehearse, record and finish their debut album
‘All We Know is Falling’, they said it was the most stressful experience of
their lives, but it was a fantastic album so they are proud of what they
accomplished even though the overall experience and pressure from the label was
intense and mentality changing. Many
bands and artists are beginning to want to create music by their own means and
not to be pulled down with record labels interfering, or given them ridiculous
deadlines to meet.
The Business of
Music
It works in the
way that the label discovers the band, the band is signed and is given a record
advance but they the band has to return the money through record sales and
bands don’t see any of the money they make through their music until they’ve
recouped back what the record label gave them in advance. The band must sign
away large amounts of the profits and rights just to be signed by these labels,
not even streaming sites such as Spotify and GrooveShark give back what they
take. Spotify pays the bands record
label $0.0097 per song stream and iTunes pays $0.0033. These sites can be seen
as destroying the industry, as fans can see that why go out and buy a CD or
download a song/album if you can just steam the song for free, or for a small
monthly fee. Streaming sites such as
Youtube have definitely dealt a blow to the music industry, able to stream
content straight off their website, such as live videos, music videos, behind
back stage, tour diaries, all this content that in the past the label would have
full control over, in DVD releases, single releases, full album releases. Users
aren’t even bothered by ads anymore, as you are given the ability to skip it
after a 5 second interval, but social advertising is on the rise so we will so
a lot more of these ads around us. Digital advertisement as long been a means
for businesses to sell their products online through banners, ads and keyword
buys and has generated opportunities for clickthroughs, but these methods are
beginning to become ineffective now in social networking as long term users
have developed a symptom known banner blindness’. Consumers are learning to
ignore many tactics employed by companies in favour of their desired content;
targeted media is failing to have the effect they once had as people are just
simply ignoring their products. But In recent polls from May of 2011 taken from
marketers and agencies in regards to social networking, regardless to past
efforts and level of satisfaction 60% asked anticipate that social advertising
will be very useful to them over the next two years.67% of these companies are
currently involved or going to be involved over the next 12 months in social
advertising and 54% are over all satisfied with social networking and what it
accomplishes.
Music has defined
history be is cultural, symbolically, celebratory or socially but now in the
modern age, technology has defined music. In the 19th century,
revenue for musicians was through composition and production of printed music,
which was the foundation of creating, protecting and promoting within the music
industry. Industrial evolution came in
response to technological changes, the invention of the gramophone herald way
to pre recorded music in psychical form of vinyl, which has become one of the
most popular formats in music for the last 100 years. The invention of radio
and TV gave publishes a bigger chance to adapt, selling rights to stations to
play their artists music. As technology grows so did better quality formats,
such as the reel to reel tape in 1935, the audio cassette in 1958, the 8 track
in 1964 and one of the more significant format since psychical distribution
began to flourish, the compact disc.
‘I don't even know what
words to use to talk about the music industry anymore. But the business has
changed a lot - the methods of releasing music’-(Anthony Kiedis, cited
in an interview with Rolling Stones Magazine)
But at the turn of
the 21st century, something completely revolutionized the industry
giving new ways to income stream and tremendous growth of businesses, and that
is the invention of digital music. MP3 players allowed you to carry around
hundreds of thousands of songs at any one time, compressing songs down to ones
and zeros, to the smallest possible digital size you can have. MP3 stands for
MPEG Audio Layer 3 and it is a standard for audio compression, which makes any
music file smaller with little or no loss of sound quality. The inventor of this compression technique
and holds the patent for this technology, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
says
"Without Data reduction, digital audio signals
typically consist of 16 bit samples recorded at a sampling rate more than twice
the actual audio bandwidth (e.g. 44.1 kHz for Compact Discs). So you end up
with more than 1.400 Mbit to represent just one second of stereo music in CD
quality. By using MPEG audio coding, you may shrink down the original sound
data from a CD by a factor of 12, without losing sound quality." (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, cited from The
History of MP3, p5)
This revolutionary technology has opened the way to
businesses such as Apple to dominate this digital market without even being a
record label, social networking sites such as Soundcloud and Myspace give
budding artists to upload their recorded music onto the internet to be heard by
anyone around the world with an internet connection, and social networking
allows for free advertising. It is a buffet of technological revolution against
traditional means of music distribution.
Revolution of
the Internet
The connection of
every single computer on the planet has certainly made this a smaller world to
live on, not one single person in a first world country can say they don’t have
a digital fingerprint or an online presence somewhere. Connectivity has created
an economy of reliance on technology and a generation of online ‘couch
potatoes’, the average internet user in the UK spend nine hours a day online, 1
billion hits per day on Google, 4 billion plays per day on Youtube, more than
250 million tweets per day on Twitter and more than 800 million updates per day
on Facebook. This statistics just show
how widely used the internet is, and believe it or not it is still growing,
rapidly. The top 10 in demand jobs of
2010 did not exist in 2004, schools currently prepare their pupils for job that
don’t currently exist, using t technologies that haven’t been invented yet and
in order to solve problems we don’t have yet. It took the radio 38 years to
reach an audience of 50 million, Television 13 years, the Internet 4 years, the
iPod 3 years and Facebook 2 years. The number of internet devices in 1984 was
1000, the number in 1992 was 1,000,000, and in 2008 the number of devices with
internet access on them was 1,000,000,000. This information shows us that
connectivity has risen dramatically over the past 15 years, and still is one
the rise. Information passes us so fast and penetrates us that we take in more
information in a week then someone 100 years ago did in a lifetime. The
development of high speed broadband was a sort of revolution in a revolution,
small online businesses began popping up everywhere, people and businesses were
starting to span across all boarders, everyone had a voice and were all
screaming to be heard. Musicians started creating an online voice for their
music; social networking was flooded with self advertisement for their
creations. The internet helped to revitalize and rejuvenate a somewhat lacking
industry, the birth of the internet gave way to online shopping which started
to kill ‘the high street’, the industry relied on sales of records, and CD’s to
make their profits. iTunes and Amazon
were responsible for the majority of digital downloads over the past 6 years,
record labels failed to capitalize on new revenue streams that the internet now
provided, and now the leading sellers of digital distribution are not record
labels but opportunists that saw the internet for what it was going to be, a
revolution.
“Because
of [eBay auction] sales I now have international customers who psychically come
to my retail store in search of the kinds of music they are looking for. None of this would happen if not for the
internet.” (Warren Westfall, Online
Presence Resuscitates ‘Buggy Whip’ Sales, p16)
Digital technology
thus far managed to erode the power of the established labels that have been
the gatekeepers for music distribution for the past 80 years. It is so simple
for a musician to record their music and distribute it online via various
networking channels, musicians have discovered that they are in control of
their careers. With various tools at their disposal, recording programs such as
Cuebase, Audacity, Logic, Pro Tools, and recording microphones can be easily
purchased from online shops and high street outlets. The most popular
microphone that is used today in ‘bedroom recording’ is the Tbone SC 1100, this is a
popular device for amateurs and experienced recording artists alike.
File
Sharing/P2P
Everyone today is
familiar with peer to peer networking and file sharing, indirectly or directly.
It has mutated to become a culture within the youthful generation whom have
been raised to be technologically aware. Even a child as young as 5 years old
can operate a computer to the standards of an adult, kids who were bought up
and being surrounded with technology 15 years ago, are now beginning to push
technological, social and legal limits.
For musician’s,
technology has dramatically improved the odds for artists to be discovered via
the internet and social networking, it has reduced costs to record and
reproduce their music next to nothing. So with artists and bands they are
unfortunate enough not to be have been picked up by labels can still put their
music out there and reach an audience they had not previously been able
to. Artists that have been signed always
reap the benefit of file sharing and the music being exchanged for free, while
record companies get almost the entire negative of peer to peer networking. The
music industry has been combating this for years ever since Napster first
brought file sharing into the public light, shinning a somewhat unwanted
spotlight on to the file sharing underbelly that was only used by the most
experience technologists.
In 1999 when Shaun
Fanning released Napster it caused a social uproar, within the first week
Napster had gained over 15,000 users, this was only meant to be an experiment
among Shaun and 30 of his friends, but word of mouth won over secrecy. As
quickly as Napster started it was finished, receiving over 2.9 billion counts
of violations and subsequent law suits from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Since
then, this has opened the door for an infinite amount of peer to peer
networking and files sharing sites, unfortunately record labels have failed to
capitalize on this, instead of looking to try and produce higher quality music
and a choice of artists they sign, they have chosen to wage a constant (and
what seems a never ending) legal battle against any file sharers out there. But
certain bands have successfully manage to capitalize on such ideas, i.e. Linkin
Park (a popular alternative metal group from California) released a track of
their up and coming album onto a website called Streetwise Concepts; it quickly made its way onto P2P networks, thus
creating hype and buzz for this unreleased album and live shows to come. Word
of mouth almost singlehandedly raised this semi obscure band to global fame
within the space of a year.
All over
the world, pockets of independent musicians have banded together to show their
support for these networks claiming they express self direction and creativity
without the need for labels and promoters. Artists now reject the notion that
you can’t succeed in the music industry without a label backing you. The
relationship between consumer and seller has now changed drastically, the
paradigm has shifted, and musicians can be directly linked to their audience,
with a further spread and a longer reach than ever before.
"We encourage and promote the free
exchange of our own music on the Internet using file
sharing programs and P2P networks; we consider this new opportunity
to share our music and ideas with others, and for others to share our music and
ideas with each other, to be good for us, good for society, and good for
art."- (
Negativland (band), quote taken from www.negativland.com)
Old and New Recording Techniques
Sampling has
become a large part of the digital revolution, it is common practice amongst
DJ’s to sample other musicians work, and to incorporate it into their songs.
The advantage of doing this is once a song is compressed down to data, the
potential to manipulate it is limitless. The tone can be changed, speed, tempo,
extra bars can be added and taken away,
anything down to the smallest detail, such as a kick off a bass drum or
a string on a guitar. Back in the pre digital age, to get an effect you had to
psychically manipulate whatever format you were recording on to. E.g. when the
speed of the record was increased, the pitch rose and vice versa, the same as
increasing magnification on a digital photo, the pixels will increase making
the image become more blurry.
Back to the
digital age where sounds can be reversed, embedded, cut and looped within other
samples, creating an entirely new song to what it was originally intended to be.
A common practice within the industry now is to re-master old pieces of music;
most significantly has been The Beatles discography, which was worked on over a
four year period and then was released in 2009. Originally the band used the
bare minimum of technology to record the majority of their tracks, using just a
single tape recorder to record their music then psychically manipulating that
tape for other effects and recording that tape onto another. Most notably on ‘Rain’
while John Lennon was under the effect of marijuana, he recorded some vocal
tracks, and accidently loaded a reel to reel tape backwards and liked what he
heard and has this reversed overdubbed. John quickly adapted this technique to
a lot of his songs, such as ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’; two songs
famous for this technique. The Beatles were so fond of this reversal technique
that they started to adapt it to their guitar playing as well. George Harrison
used a reversed guitar track on ‘I’m Only Sleeping, and Ringo Starr used a backwards
looping track for his drumming on the globally popular song ‘Strawberry Fields
Forever’.
This gave birth to multi track recording and
sampling.
The Beatles also
experimented with feedback, this came from Paul McCartney plucking an A-note on
his bass guitar and John Lennon’s semi acoustic guitar picking it up and
hearing the resulting sound through an amp, this was first adapted and added to
their song ‘I Feel Fine’ which was released in 1964. John Lennon worked hard to
create this sound live on stage and this was the basis for many rock and roll
bands of the time, and even today for bands to use this technique live on stage
or on a record.
With heavier types of
music, the complexity and convulsion found within can make playing the song an
impossible task. So multi track recording is taken advantage off and is
used to record parts of a song at a time. A prime example of this which caused
much controversy within the metal community was DragonForce’s 2006 song
‘Through the Fires and Flames’. Where the guitarist Herman Li could not play the
guitar solo he had written as it was so complex, but refused to dumb it down as
he says it is essential to the rawness of the song.
Over the past 2
years there has been a fad remerging for going back to traditional means of
recording. The rock band Foo Fighters recorded their last album entirely on
tape in Dave Grohl’s home garage quoting he didn’t want a single computer
involved and wants to use tape because
he loves the sound of human performance. Grohl is a punk rocker at heart and
this comes from being part of the first generation of rockers to take advantage
of basement recordings and homemade studio’s. So when it came to the band
recording their newest album ‘Wasting Light’ he managed to convince Butch Vig (the
producer who worked with Nirvana on their debut album ‘Nevermind’) to produce
them in a totally computer free recording studio. Butch took some convincing, and said to Dave
if they run into any trouble then he will just dump the work into Pro Tools. The
band stated from the beginning and throughout the recording process that they didn’t
want that, that they have become tired of the perfectionist attitude towards
making music.
Butch Vig quoted
’ I just tried to make
my head go back in time a little bit. I said to him, ‘That means you
guys have to be razor‑sharp tight. You’ve gotta be so well rehearsed, ’cause
I can’t fix anything. I can’t paste drum fills and choruses around.
This is gonna be a record about performance, about how you guys play.’- (Butch Vig, SOS Interview
with The Foo Fighters, p33)
With the album completely
recorded over a 13 week process, the band recruited Alan Moulder who had worked
with Them Crooked Vultures, The Smashing Pumpkins and The Killers to oversee
the mixing of the album. Alan also was taken aback by their choice to record
the album entirely on tape and not using a single computer, he said that he
hasn’t mixed off tape since 2002, which was over 10 years ago, and was so used
to mixing in Pro Tools and having the comfortability of digital music. This just shows that even the
most experience producer and editor that have learnt their trade on analogue
techniques, the digital age has completely changed recording techniques and
mindsets. Though technology has broken down a lot of barriers of recording, it
has raised a lot of walls with creativity and skill. The generation after
theirs will never have heard of reel to reel recording, the techniques that the
most experience studio professionals know are dying out; they’ve become a dying
breed. Even though digital music can offer so many more advantages and choices
with various programs, tools, equipment and technologies, they can never offer
the same rawness and energy that older recording techniques offer. Just listen
to Metallica’s ‘Kill Em All’ album and listen to the energy, the purity, the
realness of the album from start to finish, it has moved an entire generation
of music listeners. And that is how they made a name for themselves, becoming a
musical powerhouse and poster band for heavy metal everywhere over the last 30
years just because of how the band sounded from that record.
Conclusion
This dissertation has given various
accounts of music history, technology used by musicians past and present,
explored the music industry and the business of it all. This study set out to
find has it been artists or technologies that have evolved recording,
manufacturing and the distribution of mainstream music over the past century.
It was shown that technologies have
become a gateway for musicians to create new sounds and new genres. This is
evidence by in my previous chapter of ‘The Birth of Rock n Roll’ how the Kinks
guitarist Dave Davis took an amp, sliced the cone and basically invented the
sound of Rock, which is used by every rock guitarist to date, and even is
present in many different genres. The years of Synth Pop is my prime example
for how the creation of music has been revolutionized, how an entire generation
put down their guitars and started to sample and produce new technological
instruments. How people listen to music has changed dramatically thanks to
technology as well, first was the gramophone, then came along vinyl, and then
tapes and CD’s and lastly mp3. These findings expressed my view that
technologies have had a significant effect in musicians, and even people who
experience through television, radio, the internet, and even just going
outside. The availability and mass production of cheaper instruments had also
had a significant effect on genres of music, from the fender guitar becoming
the first mass produced instrument giving people everywhere to buy and learn
and in turn creating historic and talented musicians. The first affordable synthesizer gave way to
new genres that have had an incredible result on nowadays music; creating music
through technology arouses creativity which is allowed to burst out in all
directions.
This all answers my original
question, and it has been technologies that have evolved the creation, the
recording, manufacturing and distribution of music from the past century
leading up to present day. Technology has been a gateway for young and old
musicians to just access music; people everywhere experience music on different
levels, either through creating music or listening to music.
Music and technology will always go
hand in hand and there will always be new and exciting ways to experience music
in the future, and for one I am looking forward to the endless possibilities.
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