MUSIC DELIVERY REVOLUTIONS
THE BIRTH OF DIGITAL AUDIO
In the year 1877, audio recording and reproduction launched through Thomas Edison’s discovery of the cylinder phonograph when attempting to transcribe telegraphic messages.[1] Audio technology quickly adapted, while staying within the limits of recording and playback, next to the gramophone in around 1887 which incorporated flat spinning disks rather than the indented cylinders. The disks allowed music to be more easily mass-produced and thus in the hands of even more listeners.[2] Gramophones evolved into the more commonly recognized and widely used vinyl record players in the late 1940s but were left behind for more portable, or on-the-go, options like 8 tracks and cassette tapes which advanced and grew in popularity throughout the 60s and 70s. Although smaller and more affordable, cassette tapes still managed to develop an accessible space for altering or mixing for users and artists without large industry labels.[3] Additionally, this space allowed cassettes to forge the beginning of bootleg recording and distribution by users without artist control.
Later in 1991, the newest technological advancement in audio, the compact disk or CD, overtook cassette tapes.[4] Through improving the longevity, size, and storage of vinyl records and cassette tapes, popularization in music grew because of the CD’s digitization of audio. CDs became the most efficient way of sharing music and its paired artwork for both aspiring and famous artists, though only for the decade due to their higher cost and predetermined content.[5]
INTERNET REVOLUTION
Despite .mp3 files and the internet existing briefly before, it wasn’t until 2000 with the establishment of Napster and tinier MP3 players that they became the most popular method of music sharing and delivery. Users were enticed by the access to free downloadable music that could be even singular song files. Artists, on the other hand, suffered negative effects leading the band Metallica to file copyright infringement, racketeering, and unlawful use of digital audio interface devices against Napster after finding an unreleased, alternative song mix leaked onto the site. Napster itself was put to rest only for other free service models like LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and Gnutella, proving to be determinantal to the industry’s revenue and mostly illegal for users to consume.[6]
Similarly, though in response to industry revenue loss to web piracy, the rise and creation of digital-only environments like iTunes Music Store launched in 2003. According to Apple Developer Steve Jobs, this platform “revolutionized the way people legally buy music online” with shuffling software and seamless buying and management of digital music collections.[7] Though advancements were made by Big Tech to compensate the losses of major labels, Canadian-British science fiction author and copyright liberalization activist, Cory Doctorow, revisits better solutions still two decades later on Twitter. Doctorow’s proposition to get artists paid, as opposed to labels, with blanket licenses that have per-user fees to prevent the necessity of having “negotiated a favorable contract with a monopolist.”[8]
ALGORITHMIC BASED MUSIC DISCOVERY
The most publicly mainstream modern music delivery designs consist of algorithmic recommendations that are driven by human choice and influence interactions. This began with web applications like Pandora Internet Radio in around 2005, which is acclaimed for producing similar music suggestions based on one song or artist input. The rise of smartphones led to a preference in streaming music from the internet as opposed to downloading shared .mp3 files from Napster or purchasing content through iTunes, leading to the infiltration of music streaming service applications. According to MIDiA Research Music Subscriber Market Share Model, in 2021, the most popular internet music streaming service was Spotify with 31%, followed by Apple Music, the new version of iTunes, with 15% of a total 523.9 million streaming subscribers.[9] Services Spotify and Apple Music have generally been criticized for their lack of royalty payout to the artists on the platform and for showing record label favorability over smaller artists leading artist Jay-Z to develop their own service, TIDAL, that provides a more unique experience with perks like early concert ticket access with the intent of paying and valuing the artists higher. User streaming experience can often be satisfied by low cost, robust library, and most importantly tailored music discovery regardless of its impact on audio creators.
Future advancement of human interaction-based algorithmic influence stems from adaptive and biometric music designs, being those that relate specific events to variations in musical performance.[10] In fruition, biometric music designs are most commonly used and created for video games, for example, speeding up the tempo of the music to increase adrenaline during a battle scene. There have also been developments in bringing this adaptive music into reality with platforms like run.weav.io which syncs coaching and music to your workout pace. endel.io is responsible for larger leaps by connecting neuroscientific data to increase a user’s focus and lower their stress by inputting real-time data including time of day, weather, heart rate, and location. These strides work to eliminate the need for human interaction or choice as a piece of the algorithm, and instead promote unconscious decision making with motivational reactions to better suit user needs. Artists and creators are ensuring their place in this adaptive music industry by breaking their music into segments for users before the data encounters them, cueing YE’s STEMPLAYER, a portable, audio mixing speaker that can easily isolate four stems (vocals, drums, bass, and samples) of any song with the slide of a finger. weav.io suggests that musicians see the potential of bringing tracks out of the background by integrating them into the physical experience of life, allowing users to rediscover each song every time they listen to ultimately strengthen the bond between listener and artist.[11]
LIVE PERFORMANCE
Additionally, the general listener and artist have been offered brand new methods to experience or create the realm of live music performances through virtual and augmented reality. Since the mid-2010s, innovations in real-time live-streaming capabilities and immersive VR headsets have slowly begun to succeed. Virtual music spaces present opportunities in inclusivity and accessibility by providing front row seating options for all, more affordable tickets, and audience communication rooms. For aspiring musicians, a VR space can be a fully equipped studio, providing less expensive learning and making.[12] Introducing augmentation to an experience can further boost the overall immersivity of the environment, targeting additional sensoria and altogether inventing possibilities such as rap artist Travis Scott’s infamous roller coaster backdrop becoming a fully functional amusement park for the VR ticket holders.[13] The overall push for either more immersion or dropping the modernizations altogether is driven by users who feel that a virtual performance does not feel exactly like an in-person concert.
IN THE FUTURE
Together, the futures of both biometric design and augmented reality meet in speculations crafted from a science fiction realm. Lawrence Lek, “an artist, filmmaker, and musician working in the fields of virtual reality and simulation” explores how the sonic world specifically can be used to create immersive environments by worldbuilding near future soundscapes.[14] The implications of the significance of a soundscape for a convincing, entrancing environment suggest that reality should have a fully immersive sonic experience as well.
Creators have been exploring opportunities for advancement in making an enveloping reality environment with listening devices, the most mainstream being Apple’s wireless, Bluetooth AirPods launching initially in 2016. The newest generations provide total noise cancelation to best support Background Sounds, ambient sonic choices to mask outside environmental distractions, in just an earpiece controlled by the user’s iPhone. Mimicking algorithmic discovery advancements, the innovations in listening devices are working to eliminate user interaction and influence through sound beaming. Sound beaming is the movement of ultrasonic waves and pockets of sound to create an exclusive bubble of sound, including environmental surroundings, around a user’s ear.[15] A more commonly known example of experimentation in this space is Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip, intended to stream music within your head and brain completely deviceless, though a more successful approach comes from Noveto, a desktop device that 3D maps a user’s face to track and beam sound directly to the ears.[16] When eliminating even the need for device interaction, the algorithms can become more powerful and potentially successful in their predictions.
A speculation of the predictive abilities of a future listening device comes from journalist Cherie Hu who has been exploring topics in the nexus of music, media, and technology over the past five years.[17] She writes a conversation with her future self in the year 2035 and reveals the latest craze in the music industry: YouNite, the first successful brain-computer interface. The platform incorporates algorithmic-based music discovery through neurological and biometric data while emphasizing a screenless world. Hu further explains how detrimental YouNite has been for independent artists due to the industry’s focus on “mining, quantifying and optimizing culture for profit” as opposed to music sharing and delivery to profit the artist themselves.[18]
Favorability, even in future speculations, steers towards corporate expansion making musician spaces increasingly more difficult to infiltrate without its influence. Throughout multiple music design revolutions in two centuries of history, small artists and creators have lacked space for profitability as innovations continue to advance the money collected by industry labels instead.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Library of Congress, “History of the Cylinder Phonograph,” Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies (Library of Congress), accessed March 14, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/.
[2] Mary Bellis, “Emile Berliner and the History of the Gramophone,” ThoughtCo (ThoughtCo, November 4, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/emile-berliner-history-of-the-gramophone-1991854.
[3] Lisa Hix, “Cassette Revolution: Why 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World,” Collectors Weekly, June 2, 2015, https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cassette-revolution/.
[4] Pedro Abshire, “The Compact Disc and How It Change the Music Industry,” Carousel News, May 25, 2021, https://www.carouselnews.com/the-compact-disc-era/.
[5] Pedro Abshire, “The Compact Disc and How It Change the Music Industry,” Carousel News, May 25, 2021, https://www.carouselnews.com/the-compact-disc-era/.
[6] Stephen Dowling, “Napster Turns 20: How It Changed the Music Industry,” BBC Culture (BBC, May 31, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190531-napster-turns-20-how-it-changed-the-music-industry.
[7] “Apple,” Apple, October 16, 2003, https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2003/10/16Apple-Launches-iTunes-for-Windows/.
[8] Cory Doctorow, “Twitter,” Twitter (blog), May 27, 2020, https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1265686498474463234.
[9] MIDiA and Dave Leclair, How-To Geek, January 20, 2022, How-To Geek, January 20, 2022, https://www.howtogeek.com/781066/new-report-reveals-most-popular-music-streaming-services/.
[10] Inevitable Human, “Adaptive Music – Songs That Auto-Match Your Mood,” Inevitable/Human, October 15, 2019, https://inevitablehuman.com/adaptive-music/.
[11] Weav Music, “What Adaptive Music Means for Artists and Producers,” Medium (Medium, February 28, 2018), https://medium.com/@weavmusic/what-adaptive-music-means-for-artists-and-producers-758334126943.
[12] Matt DeCesare and Homer Wang, “The Use of AR and VR to Change the Future of Music,” Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, April 23, 2020, https://neuro.wharton.upenn.edu/community/winss_scholar_article4/.
[13] DeCesare, Matt, and Homer Wang. “The Use of AR and VR to Change the Future of Music.” Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, April 23, 2020. https://neuro.wharton.upenn.edu/community/winss_scholar_article4/.
[14] Lawrence Lek, “About,” Lawrence Lek 陆明龙, accessed March 14, 2022, https://lawrencelek.com/About.
[15] Randy, “What's A Byte?,” What's A Byte? (blog), accessed March 15, 2022, https://whatsabyte.com/music-without-headphones-speakers.
[16] Danny Wright, “Brain Chips and Biometrics: The Future of How We'll Consume Music,” VICE, April 15, 2021, https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxqmj/brain-chips-and-biometrics-the-future-of-how-well-consume-music. , Focusing Future, “How Will We Listen Music in the Future?,” Focusing Future (McKinsey&Company, May 22, 2018), https://www.focusingfuture.com/me-consumer/how-will-we-listen-music-in-the-future/.
[17] Cherie Hu, “Cherie Hu,” Cherie Hu, accessed March 15, 2022, https://www.cheriehu.com/.
[18] Cherie Hu, “Hello, Brave New World!,” National Public Radio (NPR, July 26, 2019), https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745361267/hello-brave-new-world.
