Nothing Like The Sound of Music

Beethoven once said that music can change the world and he was right. Today, we can see that music has evolved into a major industry that impacts people from all over the globe. In 1877, Thomas Edison created a revolutionary invention. The phonograph changed how we experience music as it allowed people to record and listen to recorded music. This invention changed everything and became the proverbial doorway to an endless evolution of musical content. The Smithsonian Magazine explains that “Back in the mid-1800s if you wanted to hear a song, you had only one option: live. You listened while someone played it, or else you played it yourself”. Edison changed how music was enjoyed when he unveiled his phonograph.

This technology was life-altering for music artists. It was nothing like anyone had ever seen, or in this case heard, before. The fact that someone could listen to a Frank Sinatra song that was recorded in 1940 and hear it from the comfort of their own home was extraordinary for his fans. Liveabout describes Sinatra as “...one of the most highly acclaimed singer-actors of all time...forming one of the first known instances of ‘teenage culture’ in America.” Sinatra became one of the most influential people, became the first pop star and created the genre we know now as pop. But music was simply on the cusp of being something much more.

Music soon came to the ears of listeners through broadcasting. 20 years after Edison’s invention of the phonograph, an Italian inventor created a device that used radio waves. This device did not affect music yet, but it pioneered the initial engineering so radios could eventually come to be. Radios began to broadcast in 1920 when Frank Conrad started KDKA from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This truly changed everything. The radio station was comprised mainly of advertisements, news stories, and educational possibilities. But more importantly, music played through households all across America.

Companies began to realize that there was a lot of money in songs and radios. In the 1940s, new musical genres started to evolve. Pop transitioned into Rock ‘n’ Roll which evolved into Heavy Metal. Today, there is a never-ending supply of new musical genres as there are thousands. Everynoise is a website that keeps track of virtually every genre out there. In February 2020 they reported that there are just under 4,000 genres, sub-genres, and micro-sub-genres on Spotify. It is clear that genres of music have blown up since the 40s.

Fast forward to 2001, portable music became substantially popular. A company by the name of Apple built a computer software named iTunes, and a mobile device is known as the iPod so that listeners could portably listen to their music. Before the iPod, there were Walkmans and mp3 players, but no company capitalized on this industry quite as Apple did. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs advertised, “With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of a digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go.” What nobody knew was just how quickly it would take off. In Apple’s first year with the new mobile device, they sold 25,000. By 2003, only two years later, they sold over 600,000 and by December of the next year, they were sold 10 million. Those numbers did not stop climbing until they just stopped making them in 2014 with 375 million sales because of another shift in the music industry.

In 2008, Spotify opened its doors to the idea of any song, anytime, anywhere. Consumers loved it and so did other streaming services. Streaming music became the music industry’s biggest marketplace. Today, there are over 300 different kinds of streaming services.

Because of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, we can have iTunes and Spotify today. Edison said, “My dream for the phonograph is simple: someday, I hope people will buy it ironically, even though far superior technologies are available.” He was not far off as there is a trend of people going back to record players because of the nostalgia. Beethoven was right when he said music can change the world.