Technology's New Spin on Music

▪ 1999

      Throughout the 20th century the music industry has been revolutionized by technology. This process, which accelerated in the 1980s and '90s, can be traced back to the invention of sound recording by Thomas A. Edison in 1877. Technological developments of this century have created a music culture unimagined even a few years ago.

      By 1998 the challenges and opportunities brought about by technological change had become the most critical ever for musicians and music lovers. Crucial elements of this change included the advent of digital recording and the development of the Internet. By the late 1990s both of these technologies had reached a critical level of public acceptance and use for communication and data storage in general and music in particular. Digital recordings provided a high level of clarity and wide dynamic range, and the Internet had seemingly limitless space available for data storage.

      The emergence of a new computer file format called MP3—which stands for MPEG-1, Layer 3—caused record companies to worry about their profits (competing schemes included Liquid Audio, a2b, and Madison Project). MP3 worked by compressing large amounts of information into small packages that could easily be sent over the Internet. The information could be anything that could be transformed into digital information, such as video clips, art, or music. Once the information reached its destination, it was decompressed and used or stored as a computer file. Suddenly there was a completely new way to store and access music.

      Electronic copyright quickly became important as a legal issue affecting all products on the Internet. The ease that digital recording provided in copying music from one format to another threatened the security of musicians' intellectual property rights to their compositions and performances. This risk was heightened by the development of a palm-sized MP3 player called the Rio from Diamond Multimedia that cost as little as $200 and stored up to an hour of digitally recorded sound. The Rio (as well as a number of similar devices) allowed the owner to upload a recording to the Internet or download music already available there onto a personal computer. The recording industry became alarmed by this trend, since individuals could now create their own collections of recordings without actually purchasing CDs. Whereas both the Rio and the Internet provided many advantages for musicians, if they were misused, the potential for worldwide high-tech violations of copyright was great.

      On a more positive note, knowledge about and appreciation of good music were much enhanced by the proliferation of World Wide Web pages devoted to music. Music organizations were no longer limited to the traditional print media to communicate their message. By the end of 1998, all the major musical organizations—symphony orchestras, chamber groups, music publishers, instrument manufacturers, and groups of aficionados with special musical interests, not to mention rock and pop music performers—had developed their own Web pages and established a solid presence on the Internet. Composers had home pages, as did national organizations such as the American Symphony Orchestra League and Opera America, reference publishers (e.g., the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), government agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts, and magazines such as Opera News and Gramophone. One of the newest Web sites devoted to classical music was set up by Amazon.com, the third largest bookseller in the United States.

      The technological curve established at the beginning of the century by record companies such as Deutsche Gramophone and EMI (both recently celebrated centennial anniversaries) was climbing sharply. As the music industry moved into the 21st century, the advantages and risks that new technologies represented were only beginning to be realized.

JOSEPH MCLELLAN

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