Instituto Educacional Santo Elias

Alunas: Ana Luíza Dutra Silva

Série: 1º ano Turma: Responsabilidade

Data: 31/03/ 2021

From Discs to Digital: The Odd History of

Music Formats
Technology has been transforming absolutely everything around us. The way we communicate, the way we consume
content, the sharing of daily stories and, of course, the way we meet artists and listen to music.

The evolution of the music industry mixes with the evolution of the media and distribution formats, from vinyl
records, through radio, K7 tapes and CDs, to MP3. If before, to be successful, you had to be inside an influential
label, today you just must be good and, somehow, fall in the public's taste.

Like everything the web has already changed, music is no different: power has changed hands and now the tendency
is for the public to dictate what they want to see or hear, and not the other way around. As a result, there were
changes in the way recorders work, which also guaranteed access by independent producers to a huge audience.

Vinyl records

Records, or discs, of varying speeds and materials have been around since the early 1900s, early versions rotated at
78 RPM and were made of shellac, which made them noisy and fragile. In 1948, Columbia Records produced a 33
RPM 12-inch ‘long play’ format, which we know today as the LP. Shortly after, RCA Records developed a 45 RPM 7-
inch ‘extended-play single’ format, or the EP for short. Because of the fragility of shellac, which was frequently
broken during transport, both Columbia and RCA Records eventually began producing their LP and EPs on vinyl.

Compact Cassettes

Compact Cassettes, or tapes, were invented by the Philips company and introduced to Europe at the Berlin Radio
Show—Europe’s oldest tech convention with a rich history of its own. Early cassettes featured reverse housing with a
max play time of 45 minutes of stereo audio per side—significantly longer than a vinyl LP’s playtime. Tapes also fit in
a more affordable, compact package. The small size of tapes gave rise to portable players, making them a convenient
development in the history of how and where we listen. The cassette also fit perfectly into the post-war era. A boom
in population and suburban expansion meant cars… lots of cars. So the need for mobile playback systems and
formats was a hot concept. The invention of tapes also introduced a volatile new concept into recorded music:
Piracy. Cassettes also birthed mixtape culture—a concept that runs the music industry as we know it today. These
days tapes certainly aren’t our main mode of listening, but the industry is still active—In 2016, cassette sales grew by
74% from the previous year.

Floppy Disk

The floppy disk revolutionized data transfer, increasing the capacity of portable media, since, until its invention, the
main system was the perforated card, which kept a maximum of 80 characters. Its popularity was so great that even
today it is used as an icon to represent the action of "saving" in most programs. The floppy release remained niche
and never truly hit the mainstream. Regardless of diskette’s ill-fated moment in music, the floppy represents an
important foreshadowing of music’s digital future—a trend that would soon be taken up by the CD explosion…
Compact Disc

From the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, the popularity of Compact Discs would increase, thus
providing greater capacity, durability and clarity of sound, without squeaking, making vinyl records considered
obsolete. In 2004, worldwide sales of CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached the mark of 30 billion records sold. In 2007,
200 billion records were sold worldwide. CDs are being heavily replaced by other forms of digital media or
distribution and, as a result, CD sales have dropped to 50% of their peak in the United States.

MP3

The MP3 was originally developed in the the early 80s by researcher Karlheinz Brandenburg. But it wasn’t until 1992
that the MP3 went mainstream, and not until 1999—with the creation of Napster—that the format really caught fire.
Napster allowed for free peer-to-peer file sharing of the MP3 audio file that resulted in widespread copyright
infringement and understandable outrage from the music industry. Despite its brief 3 year run in its initial form,
Napster eventually paved the way for platforms like the iTunes store—allowing users to search, purchase, and
instantly play music all with a few clicks. The effects from the shockwave that the MP3, piracy and pure digital
formats created are still being felt today. In many ways, the music industry is just now starting to recover from it’s
own digital dawn…

Streaming

The possibility of listening to, and discovering, new music without having to download files or purchase songs.
Additionally, streaming platforms aimed to make digital music a sustainable business model for everyone involved. In
many ways it has, but there is still a long way to go. Streaming apps filled the creeping demand for non-physical
access to music and ushered in our current chapter of formats: Dematerialized music.