History of Music Players

"A welcome companion to the new recording technology was the transistor, introduced by U.S.-based Bell Telephone in 1948. Until the transistor, the amplification needed for radio broadcasting and electronic recording was tied to cumbersome and fragile vacuum tubes-a component based on Lee de Forest's audion, capable of generating, modulating, amplifying, and detecting radio energy.

The transistor was capable of performing all the functions of the vacuum tube but in a solid environment. As such, it could be made smaller, required less power, and was more durable than the vacuum tube, which was soon replaced. This advance encouraged decentralization in broad-casting and recording, which aided independent production.

On the consumption side, the transistor made possible truly portable radio receivers. Teenagers, who were soon to become an identifiable consumer group, could now explore their developing musical tastes in complete privacy."

Source: Garofaro, Reebee. "From Music Publishing to MP3: Music and Industry in the Twentieth Century." American Music. no. 3 (1999): 318-354. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052666 . (accessed April 06, 2014).

The pioneers of the MP3 player; MPMan and Rio were the voices calling out in the silicon desert, “prepare ye the way of file sharing!”

These pioneers came with docking devices and software that readily enabled the user with P2P sharing capabilities, cultivating the bloom of independent song writers to showcase their work without the publishing companies as middle-men.

Threatening the industry, recording labels took action through RIAA. Still, the pirates (as allegedly called by RIAA) triumphed, with Rio wriggling through the legal loophole with mp3 player holding the definition of a memory storage device instead of a music recording device. 

Image Credit: MPMan: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/10/ft_first_mp3_player/

“The introduction of the CD opened up yet another revenue stream for the major labels-back catalogue. Back catalogue had always been a valuable commodity, as hit records have often boosted sales on previous recordings as well. With the advent of compact discs in the mid-eighties, back catalogue took on an even greater significance as consumers began buying recordings they already owned in the new configuration. The success of reissued artist retrospectives as boxed sets rendered back catalogue even more valuable.

By the early nineties, catalogue sales were estimated as high as 40 percent of all album sales, making back catalogue, for many top-selling artists, their most valuable asset. As always, however, the technology cut both ways. The CD may have captured the market in terms of quality, but cassette tape, be-cause of its greater versatility as a recordable medium, remained the preferred configuration, still outselling CDs two to one until the end of the decade. Cassette technology may have enabled the transnational music industry to penetrate remote corners of the globe, but it was also responsible for the industry's two main financial headaches of the 1980s-piracy and home taping.”

“As usual, technology-in this case the compact disc-played a key role in the industry's success story. The CD was introduced in the early 1980s simultaneously by Philips and Sony. In terms of sound quality, resistance to wear, and ease of use, the CD was far superior to the LP. While market penetration was slow at first, because of the added expenditure for new hardware, by 1988 worldwide unit sales of LPs and CDs were roughly on par. Because CDs were priced significantly higher than LPs (even though they cost no more to manufacture), purchases in the new configuration added millions to a label's bottom line. In 1986 "the sale of 53 million CDs generated almost as much income ($930 million) as the 125 million LPs sold ($983 million)."46 By the end of the decade, the LP had begun its descent into virtual extinction.”