Traditional music delivery formats

the 78rpm record

The 10" 78rpm record was introduced in 1901 and was the first time music was available for home consumption, and on-demand. Though initially just a novelty, the music industry became commercially viable after Al Jolson's recording of Swanee and the release of the first ever talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer in 1927.

The 78 was a long-player format developed for commercial use by RCA in 1931 to encourage investment in the record industry. Intended for the radio industry as a storage format to enable material to be recorded and distributed freely between stations, the 78 was originally used in the USA to store and broadcast commercials, and was accepted internationally - it was used by the BBC to distribute programmes to other branches of the station world-wide.

The domestic launch of the 78 was hindered by its poor sound quality that seemed to worsen towards the centre of the disc, and also suffered from too much emphasis on the bass frequencies. By 1935, equalisation techniques had vastly improved and the format was manufactured as unbreakable disks made of plastic-coated metal that contained up to 15 minutes of audio each side.

the vinyl LP and single

Just as the movie industry had reacted against television with the development and release of talking pictures, the record industry reacted against radio with the development of the long-playing disk (LP), which was introduced by CBS Records (now owned by Columbia Records) in 1948. The LP was the first stereo-capable long-player and marked the beginning of the high-fidelity (hi-fi) recording era.

Sound quality was greatly improved by the use of vinyl, allowing the size of the grooves to be smaller for a longer playing time, with a reduction in surface noise, an improved signal-to-noise ratio and a generally enhanced recorded signal. Technological advances such as these allowed more music than was previously possible to be stored on a disk the same size, but producing a better sound quality despite its slower rotational speed of 33 1/3 rpm.

Still available today, though not as common as in previous decades, sales of record albums peaked in 1978, before a gradual decline greatly accelerated by the introduction of the Compact Disc in the early 1980s.

The audio cassette

The audiocassette was another revolutionary new recording format, released in 1963 by Philips. Smaller than the bulkier cartridge introduced a few years earlier, its monaural, 1/8" magnetic tape construction offered poor sound quality compared to the high-fidelity LP, and as a result, posed no great threat to the format.

The cassette format became a major force in the record industry for a number of other reasons - mainly because Philips allowed everyone access to manufacturing rights, provided they followed Philips" own specifications. Another reason why the audio cassette became popular despite its apparent is that it was the first truly portable pre-recorded music system, since the player required for the format was small, relatively inexpensive and could be battery-powered. As a result, a new market was created which could not be satisfied previously by the bulkier ΒΌ" tape players and LP hi-fi systems.[7] The market was greatly increased with the introduction of Sony's Walkman in 1979 and the boom in car stereo sales. Sales of the audiocassette peaked in the US in 1988 with sales of 473 million units.[8]

Another significant aspect of the audiocassette format was that it allowed home recording through both microphone inputs and from pre-recorded disks and radio broadcasts. This development threatened the record industry's economic makeup, since pre-recorded music could now be manufactured and/or circulated outside what was once a closed, controlled market . While the audio cassette did expand the market for blank tape and encouraged fresh competition between record companies and format manufacturers, illegal taping and distribution of music became one of the main concerns of the industry, and remains so to this day.

the Compact Disc

Just as the introduction of the audiocassette rejuvenated the record industry in the 1960s/70s, the Compact Disc (also known as CD-DA or Compact Disc -Digital Audio) developed by Philips and Sony and commercially released in 1983, revolutionised the industry in the 1980s. During the format's first year of release in the US, 30 000 CD players were sold, and a total of 800 000 CDs, despite a lack of titles available to consumers. Within three years of release, sales of CD players rose to 3 million, with CD sales reaching 53 million units.[9]

The CD format was made possible due to technological advances in digital recording and the computerisation of the recording industry. Digital recording became commonplace because of its ease of editing and data manipulation, and as technology improved and prices dropped, similar digital technology was introduced into the consumer market . Music on a CD takes the form of digital data in a binary code rather than as an analogue signal, and this development revolutionised the music industry more radically than at any time since the introduction of electrical recording in the 1920s.

As with any other music format developments, there were new advantages to attract the consumer to the product, and the CD offered more than previous formats - clearer sound quality, random and immediate access to individual tracks resulting in a tracklisting chosen by the consumer rather than the industry, a continuous flow of music with no interruptions from turning over the disc to access more music, and a promised "indestructible" format with no loss of sound quality over time.

The success of the Compact Disc led to the development of other, similar formats, many of which were adopted by the music industry to help promote artists and their products in the new digital age.