From Tin Foil Phonographs to iPods…
Earlier, Greg told me he had some sort of old-fashioned phonograph contraption, which got me thinking about how we listen to and have listened to music. I’ve grown so accustomed to my iPod and iPhone playing music at my command, on-the-go, in high quality and with great choice, that it’s now hard to imagine a world where that wasn’t possible.
I remember having a CD walkman and a CD player, which at the time seemed so cool because you could choose songs without waiting, even if the machines skipped sometimes. And before that, I think I recall a cassette walkman, on which I would play mixtapes I had recorded off the radio, pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding the songs I loved when I was 10. Before that, I have vague memories of an old radio my dad kept in his workshop in the basement, where he would play classic rock while he built adirondack chairs and American Girl doll furniture. I had seen a few record albums in the basement, tucked away here and there–Billy Joel, maybe Earth, Wind and Fire–but I don’t know that I’d ever heard music play from a record player. (Greg showed me one once while we were walking around in NYC, but it was in the window of a store that was closed–so, no music.) Long before I was born, jukeboxes were installed at the Wonderbar Restaurant, owned by my godmother’s family in Worcester, Mass. When I worked there all through high school, the music was always playing–Sinatra crooning away as hungry families ate Italian.
I never really thought about music players dating before that. But this timeline from Steven E. Schoenherr (that unfortunately only takes us through 2005) gives a detailed history of how people jammed out to their tunes all the way back to the first recording of a human voice on a tin foil phonograph in 1877. Now we can share music online, start our own Internet radio stations, discuss the meaning of lyrics with people all over the world with the click of a button–hard to believe it all started with a clunky phonograph in the 19th century.
What’s interesting too, is that I associate certain songs and artists with certain music players. When you think about it, technology can drive our music memories. Do you have songs or albums that you think of in the context of the technology you use or used to listen to them? And how far back do you remember? Growing up, did you ever imagine that we’d carry music around in our pockets, listen to it from our mobile phones, never hear a skip or have to fast forward to the song we really wanted? I didn’t. Thomas Edison probably didn’t. Did you?
5 Responses to “From Tin Foil Phonographs to iPods…”
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I too mostly used CD’s before my ipod/iphone, when I was little I had tapes and used to record off the radio too, like that show “kids America” I think was the name, anyways, as for albums, I know My Mom used to play them when I was a baby because she used to yell when I jumped around and made it skip, apparently that’s bad for the needle, I didn’t know :0 . I did also use them in the early 90’s when I tried my hand at DJ’ing but that was mostly scratching and mixing music, so basically I wasn’t good with records, hehehe. But I love music though, all kinds. How about anyone else?
I can’t think of cassette tapes without also thinking of my old Sony Walkman and the soundtrack to Jurassic Park…but that image of a tape you used on your blog post reminded me of the MIXA mixtapes - they look just like cassette tapes, but are actually USB drives - the perfect thing for sharing music. Well, not perfect…but maybe nostalgic.
Great post - I just sold my record collection of 200 LPs. Parting is such sweet sorrow!
I remember trying to play basketball while using a (mostly metal) Sony discman. It did not work. The discman fell out of my pocket and shattered. My Mom was pretty pissed.
You bring back memories.
What’s most interesting to me is that the new easy-access formats for music, in which we can instantly jump to any song we want, have devalued music. Everyone used to be comfortable paying $20 for a CD in the 1990s, or before then $10 for a tape in the 1980s, but now we expect to get songs for free off the internet.
Perhaps profit, the driver of business, is easier to derive when there is friction between supply and demand. If consumers have a difficult time getting something, they are more willing to pay for it. But if music becomes like air, floating around us whenever we want, we don’t want to pay. Great for consumers, but bad for the artists trying to make a living.