From the Vinyl LP to Spotify

[Palumboism]

We lived though this and know the history, but it's interesting to see how the technology behind the music has affected the music we listen to.  This thread connects the dots between how we got from the Vinyl LP to Spotify today.

Columbia Records developed the Vinyl LP in 1948 and RCA Victor developed the Vinyl 7 inch single in 1949.  Both formats are still used to this day.

In 1954 George Eash developed the Fidelipac which was a closed loop recording used by radio stations for commercials and jingles. 

in 1962 a sales man in Los Angeles named Madman Muntz starting installing Fidelipac players in cars branded as Muntz Autostereo.  Stars like Sinatra and James Garber were customers.

In 1963 Phillips released the compact cassette which was originally developed for voice recordings and taking dictation at companies.  It was not intended for music. 

Also in 1963, Bill Lear launched the Lear jet with a Muntz Autostereo in it.  Customers started complaining that the tapes were jamming, so Bill had his engineers redesign both the tapes and the players and named it the Lear Jet 8 track player.

Bill got a consortium together including Ford, GM. Motorola, RCA, and Ampex to launch factory installed 8 track players in cars.  In 1966 the 8 track was an option on the Ford Mustang, Thunderbird, and Lincoln's.

Coincidentally, in 1966 Phillips opened the design to the compact cassette to all companies license free. 

[NaturalWonder83]

I miss vinyl and cassettes. Remember when cars had cassette players? They did right? I’m doubting myself now. I think it’s crazy how cars don’t even have CD players anymore. I remember when people used to make a big deal about going to places like Nobody Beats the Wiz and Circuit City to get new radio audio fixtures for their cars. I used to know how to play a record, but it’s been so long since I’ve used a turntable! Didn’t some cars in the 1950s and 60s have turntables in them?
I also really miss Radio Shack, Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Coconuts!

[Irongrip400]

I miss vinyl and cassettes. Remember when cars had cassette players? They did right? I’m doubting myself now. I think it’s crazy how cars don’t even have CD players anymore. I remember when people used to make a big deal about going to places like Nobody Beats the Wiz and Circuit City to get new radio audio fixtures for their cars. I used to know how to play a record, but it’s been so long since I’ve used a turntable! Didn’t some cars in the 1950s and 60s have turntables in them?
I also really miss Radio Shack, Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Coconuts!

Cars had tree players, yes. Then when you were too poor to afford a new cd player, you’d plug the tape adapter into your Discman.

[Cook]

My first car had an 8 track tape player.Anyone remember those?

[Grape Ape]

I miss vinyl and cassettes. Remember when cars had cassette players? They did right? I’m doubting myself now. I think it’s crazy how cars don’t even have CD players anymore. I remember when people used to make a big deal about going to places like Nobody Beats the Wiz and Circuit City to get new radio audio fixtures for their cars. I used to know how to play a record, but it’s been so long since I’ve used a turntable! Didn’t some cars in the 1950s and 60s have turntables in them?
I also really miss Radio Shack, Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Coconuts!

I miss none of these things.

Calling up any song instantly anywhere rules.

[Palumboism]

Muntz was installing 175 4 track players an hour into cars in Los Angeles back in the 60's.  The 4 track and 8 track existed at the same time.  Muntz even contracted two Japanese manufactures to make the Muntz 4 track.

It's no coincidence that Philips open allowed any manufacturer the right to make compact cassette players the same year Ford started installing Lear Jet 8 track players in their cars.  Format wars are very real as we learned from Beta Max versus VHS.  Phillips wanted to make sure the compact cassette won over the 8 track, which it did.

The Japanese took the compact cassette and ran with it, but it would take two innovations for it to catch on in music.  The first innovation that was needed was to reduce the background hiss.  An American engineer by the name of Dolby came up with the solution and licensed it to all the companies.  The second innovation needed was to improve the quality of the sound and that came from the development of chromium dioxide tape.



   

[Palumboism]

The Advent Model 201 was the first tape player with Dolby active noise reduction.  When Chromium Dioxide tapes are used with Dolby it transforms tape players into a high fidelity format.  From 1971 onward, the compact cassette would replace 8 track tapes.

Aftermarket brands like Craig and Pioneer brought Dolby B to the car dashboard in 1972, but it wasn't until 1980 that Factory installed tape players with Dolby B were installed.  I guess this explains why 8 track tapes hung around so long.


The first Boom Box "Ghettoblaster" was the JVC RC-550 which came out in 1975 and was nicknamed "El Diablo".


JVC RC-550 "El Diablo"

[Van_Bilderass]

Some indie bands still release cassettes. I guess it's romantic in some way.

I just sold some CDs I had online. I got $120 for one CD as some collectors want first pressings and CDs you can't get anymore. I had sold a couple of CDs and someone from Poland was crying and telling me they were dreaming about the CDs and please could I cancel the sale so he could buy them instead LOL.

Same with some books. One book I paid about $30 for I see on sale in the US for $300. I got 4x my price for a few others and I have a lot of titles but it's a bit of a chore to list them.

[Palumboism]

In 1979 all Domestic cars offered an optional 8 track player and there were no factory installed compact cassette players.  By 1980 only two domestic cars offered compact cassettes, the Cadillac El Dorado and Corvette.  At the time these were GM's two most expensive cars.  As a result the 70's were dominated by the 8 track and the compact cassette didn't really become dominant until the 80's.  The CD didn't outsell the compact cassette until 1992 and it's estimated over 100 billion compact cassette tapes have been sold since 1963.


in 1979 Sony came out with the Walkman which was a huge success.  They went on to sell 200 million of them.

The Walkman was developed by subtracting things from Sony's smallest cassette recorder at the time.  They subtracted the speaker and the ability to record.  Without a speaker they could cut amplifier by a factor of 10.  Many at Sony thought there would be no demand for it, but they were wrong.

[Palumboism]

I miss vinyl and cassettes. Remember when cars had cassette players? They did right? I’m doubting myself now. I think it’s crazy how cars don’t even have CD players anymore. I remember when people used to make a big deal about going to places like Nobody Beats the Wiz and Circuit City to get new radio audio fixtures for their cars. I used to know how to play a record, but it’s been so long since I’ve used a turntable! Didn’t some cars in the 1950s and 60s have turntables in them?
I also really miss Radio Shack, Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Coconuts!

Yes, a turntable in car is all they had at the time to 4 track tape came out, which obviously had it drawbacks .  The 4 track tape was viewed as cutting edge and a vast improvement when it came out.  It was also something only the very rich had, which is why it was installed in private jets and in celebrity's cars.

[Pet shop boys]

... To back to LP


Today you have a bunch of youngsters buying $50.00 vinyl records without even owning a turntable.


The Older folks have also been buying the new Rolling Stones album from $60 to $85.00 for a double lp album ... at least they own a somewhat high end turntable.


WoooSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh

[Pet shop boys]

Pet Shop Boys will be releasing next month “A man from the future” blending electronic and orchestral music and spoken words,

The composition explores the life, death and influence of pioneering mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing and was created in collaboration with Turing’s biographer, Professor Andrew Hodges.

The recording has been produced by Pet Shop Boys and Sven Helbig who has also arranged the strings. Juliet Stevenson narrates the story with Manchester Camerata Octet on strings, and the Manchester Grammar School choir.


Not all is lost.




WoooSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHh   Le VRo NEEEEEEEEEEE

[Palumboism]

The head of Phillips audio, Lou Ottens, started development of the CD in 1972.  By 1974 they had created a CD using analog, but the sound quality was poor and there was background noise.  They then decide to store sound digitally and convert it back into analog.  In 1979 they had a working prototype and showed it to the board.  They were given two recommendations, first, it needed to have sound quality equal to the vinyl LP.  The second recommendation was to get buy in from other manufacturers.  The board didn't want a costly format war. 

Phillips went to Japan to visit Sony and see if they wanted to partner on the CD.  Sony agreed to the partnership and the two companies negotiated a standard together with Phillips giving in on many points.  They ended up with what they called the red book in 1980, which was the standard for the CD.  The CD standard was released to all global electronic companies.

In 1981 the Japanese government brought all the electronic companies together to decide on the new audio standard.  Panasonic was the first company to agree to the new standard in early 1981 and by the end of 1981 there were a total of thirty companies that agreed to the CD standard.

The first CD players for Sony and Phillips came out in 1982.  The Sony player was priced at $700 which adjusted for inflation is $2400.  CD's were viewed as very high end players and CD's initially took sales away from Vinyl on the high end not compact cassettes.

The CD would go on to sell over 200 Billion units to this day.  CD's were also hugely profitable for the record companies because it cost only $1 to produce one, but the sale price of a CD was $18 meaning record companies and artists were making big money.  The height of CD sales was in the year 2000, after that the decline was steady.

First CD player, Sony CDP-101 (1982)

[Brenda Steunbeer]

[_bruce_]

Nakamichi made some sweet as tits equipment.

Due to brick-walling I still use vinyl for modern trash I want to listen to - Cyrus, Madonna, etc. It's crazy how much more dynamic things sound but a bit less punchy and more noisy. Unfortunately some people have caught on to this and some records are now beyond 1000€.

The streaming services are providing thrash'd material and some audiophiles do not even care... imagine firing up your 50K setup with near clipped material and thinking it's good because it's "high resolution" 

True audio-shmoe'dom lives and dies with high end record players...

[Palumboism]

Format sales by year 1973 to 1999.  Notice how CD sales, in orange, are stealing sales from Vinyl, in dark blue, before compact cassettes, in light blue.

[Palumboism]

In 1990 MPEG (The Motion Picture Experts Group) holds a listening contest of the technologies currently being developed that are competing to become the new MPEG digital audio compression standard.

1991
Three winners are announced including MPEG Layer 1, MPEG Layer 2 by Musicam, and MPEG Layer 3 by the Franuhofer Institute.

1994
Fraunhofer releases L3enc, the first software able to encode .WAV audio files into .MP3 format; for its first year, it uses the file extension ‘.BIT‘

In 1995 MPEG Layer 3 is renamed MP3.  The player WinPlay3 is released, which does not require decompressing MP3 files before playing.


By the end on 1995 the MP3 compression algorithm exists and there's and encoder and player.  Things are about to get interesting.

[NaturalWonder83]

What about the boom boxes people balanced on their shoulders while walking down the street?!

[Palumboism]

1996
An anonymous college student with the screen name NetFrack establishes a hacking group named CDA (‘Compress ‘Da Audio’).  He also begins distributing cracked copies of Fraunhofer’s L3Enc and WinPlay3 software online, allowing anyone to encode MP3 files from Compact Discs and listen to them on their computer for free.  NetFrack shares the first online pirated MP3 in history: a ripped copy of Metallica‘s single ‘Until It Sleeps’.

From 1996 to 1999 MP3's are shared online on IRC's (Internet Relay Chat).  These were just forums.

Once an MP3 was found, a DCC was used to allow two IRC users to bypass the central chat server entirely and establish a secure, direct peer-to-peer connection to transfer a file.  This is how the MP3 was transferred from on IRC user to another.

[Palumboism]

1997
Winamp, a piece of music jukebox software capable of playing MP3s, is released for DOS, Windows, and MacOS.

1998
Shawn Fanning begins his freshman year studying at Northeastern University.  After Hearing friends complain about the difficulty of finding MP3's online.  Shawn begins developing a program that makes peer to peer sharing of music easier.

Also in 1998, the RIO PMP300 MP3 Player is released. It's the first MP3 player sold in America.  Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) immediately sues Diamond, the company that makes it.  The court rules in the Favor of Diamond making MP3 players legal to sell.


1998 RIO PMP300 MP3 Player
Inside the PMP300 box is a parallel port adaptor, the player itself, and a proprietary cable to connect them both together.  Diamond also made graphics and sound cards.

[Palumboism]

1999
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker release Napster 1.0, a peer to peer file sharing program for the exchange of MP3 audio files. It becomes particularly popular on college campuses.

As much as sixty percent of the internet traffic on college campuses from 1999 to 2001 is file sharing of MP3's.  Some Universities even ban Napster to facilitate internet traffic.



At the very beginning of this video MTV is polling students in a College dorm asking how many MP3's they have on their computer.  One of the students says six or seven thousand.

Shawn Fanning (Napster) Wearing a Metallica Shirt to the 2000 MTV Awards

[_bruce_]

What about the boom boxes people balanced on their shoulders while walking down the street?!

Ghetto-Fi but still better than most modern "portables"

[Palumboism]

By 2001 Napster loses a court case against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).  The court rules that Napster must be shut down.

Multiple similar services pop up that perform the same Peer to Peer function including LimeWire, Kazaa, and Pirate Bay. 

Also in 2001 Apple releases the IPod.  It's large disk size allows 1000 songs to be stored and it's innovative scroll wheel allows the user to quickly scroll through the massive list of songs.  It's an immediate success and turns Apple, which was struggling at the time, around.

One company who dominates music is conspicuously absent from MP3 player, Sony.  Sony owned Sony music and Columbia Records and had zero interest in developing an MP3 player even though it was obvious to many consumers that was the direction they wanted to go.  Essentially Sony gave up their lead in portable music players they held since 1979. 

2001 Apple Ipod