The history of music before the twentieth century revolved around musicians and their instrument makers. Events likely to have a significant effect on this particular period of time seemed consistent. Well-tempered tuning was perfected, and soon after J.S. Bach rewrote the musical book with his groundbreaking composition, The Well-Tempered Clavier. The creation of the pianoforte fostered Beethoven's playing and writing and opened up a new powerful responsiveness. Autonomy and self-determination in music could be taken for granted, for music's fate seemed to depend, mainly, on the collective body of musicians practicing and perfecting their craft.
Half a century ago, the overwhelming choice was to buy and listen to whole albums. Today iTunes, the largest music store in the country, sells individual tracks that listeners can mix and mash in personal audio collages. I listen to a lot more mixes than albums, and even when I listen to albums, I find the songs through mixes. The impact on the music industry's bottom line is clear enough. We now exert much more control than original artists over the narrative of our musical experience. Today, because of electronic technology, we listen to unaltered music only rarely. The sounds we hear have been not only performed by musicians but also interpreted by audio engineers, who have reinforced the acoustics of concert halls, spliced together note-perfect recorded performances, created artificially reverberant performance spaces, projected sounds across the world via satellite broadcast, greatly amplified rock concerts, and created temporal continuities that never existed "live." The audio engineer is almost as highly trained as the concert performer, and can be just as sensitive an artist. Recording technology has forced us to reconsider what constitutes a piece of music. …show more content…
It is unreasonable to claim that the printed score represents the musical sounds. The score usually gives no indication of how the audio engineer should manipulate his/her variables. The Impact of Technology on the Musical by Jonathan D. Kramer Experience Written - April 15, 1997.
There is something sweet about the pleasant surprise of catching a song you love without having ordered it to play. So we often choose to outsource control over music's narrative to a machine. For decades, that machine was called "the radio." Increasingly, our radios are our computers. Every bit of technology forwards the relentless personalization of the music experience. We still cherish the choice to be surprised. Mainstream airplay may still be the best guarantee of a successful record, but new technologies, financial consolidation and shifting demographics keep wreaking havoc on the broadcast industry. According to, Derek Thompson, of The Atlantic, Jun 10, 2010, states, “It's easy to argue that technology's force has been disruptive. The music industry's profits have fallen by 60 percent in the last decade. You know why. When music was made of polyvinyl chloride (aka vinyl), it was hard to steal. Once it could be turned into a file, the price for many listeners fell to zero.” But now music is a mass-traded commodity with management vested in many other ventures, notably the multimedia entertainment. Increasingly too, non-musicians have a stake in the making of music. Basically by recording music, a performance can be sold separately from the artist. In addition to the record company subsidiaries of the entertainment giants, consumer electronic manufacturers, PC manufacturers, and the telecommunications business all appear to hold the future of music in their hands. As a consequence, the rise of talent, the vital input in the music supply chain, may no longer be the key to long-term vibrancy in the market. Over the past three decades, peaks and troughs in recorded music sales have been observed not to follow changes in artists' creativity and music making as much as the underlying shift in the technology of delivery and usage of music. This is the new leading economic indicator of the music trade cycle. There is no room for error, so labels and radio are partners more than ever before. It's a very different relationship. It's a truthful, authentic, organic period where the industry is better at seeing the future through a mix of art and science. Radio is playing more hits than ever because of information. Data driven records that come from Europe, we know that if it's
Half a century ago, the overwhelming choice was to buy and listen to whole albums. Today iTunes, the largest music store in the country, sells individual tracks that listeners can mix and mash in personal audio collages. I listen to a lot more mixes than albums, and even when I listen to albums, I find the songs through mixes. The impact on the music industry's bottom line is clear enough. We now exert much more control than original artists over the narrative of our musical experience. Today, because of electronic technology, we listen to unaltered music only rarely. The sounds we hear have been not only performed by musicians but also interpreted by audio engineers, who have reinforced the acoustics of concert halls, spliced together note-perfect recorded performances, created artificially reverberant performance spaces, projected sounds across the world via satellite broadcast, greatly amplified rock concerts, and created temporal continuities that never existed "live." The audio engineer is almost as highly trained as the concert performer, and can be just as sensitive an artist. Recording technology has forced us to reconsider what constitutes a piece of music. …show more content…
It is unreasonable to claim that the printed score represents the musical sounds. The score usually gives no indication of how the audio engineer should manipulate his/her variables. The Impact of Technology on the Musical by Jonathan D. Kramer Experience Written - April 15, 1997.
There is something sweet about the pleasant surprise of catching a song you love without having ordered it to play. So we often choose to outsource control over music's narrative to a machine. For decades, that machine was called "the radio." Increasingly, our radios are our computers. Every bit of technology forwards the relentless personalization of the music experience. We still cherish the choice to be surprised. Mainstream airplay may still be the best guarantee of a successful record, but new technologies, financial consolidation and shifting demographics keep wreaking havoc on the broadcast industry. According to, Derek Thompson, of The Atlantic, Jun 10, 2010, states, “It's easy to argue that technology's force has been disruptive. The music industry's profits have fallen by 60 percent in the last decade. You know why. When music was made of polyvinyl chloride (aka vinyl), it was hard to steal. Once it could be turned into a file, the price for many listeners fell to zero.” But now music is a mass-traded commodity with management vested in many other ventures, notably the multimedia entertainment. Increasingly too, non-musicians have a stake in the making of music. Basically by recording music, a performance can be sold separately from the artist. In addition to the record company subsidiaries of the entertainment giants, consumer electronic manufacturers, PC manufacturers, and the telecommunications business all appear to hold the future of music in their hands. As a consequence, the rise of talent, the vital input in the music supply chain, may no longer be the key to long-term vibrancy in the market. Over the past three decades, peaks and troughs in recorded music sales have been observed not to follow changes in artists' creativity and music making as much as the underlying shift in the technology of delivery and usage of music. This is the new leading economic indicator of the music trade cycle. There is no room for error, so labels and radio are partners more than ever before. It's a very different relationship. It's a truthful, authentic, organic period where the industry is better at seeing the future through a mix of art and science. Radio is playing more hits than ever because of information. Data driven records that come from Europe, we know that if it's