Music is pleasant and easy to listen to, it can calm or amuse. Now it is available to everyone and it is very easy to listen to it. But it was not always so. We will talk about this.
The origin of digital sound, from which digital music later turned out, began with the fact that in 1928 Harry Nyquist determined the required communication line bandwidth for transmitting a pulse signal.
This was followed by the creation of various scientific works, one way or another related to digital sound, as well as codes and algorithms for digitizing sound.
Part one. From the 60s of the 20th century to the 2000s
The beginning of digital sound recording. The first developments and the latest devices for that era
In 1963, Philips introduced a compact cassette that used magnetic tape for recording, later this audio medium became incredibly popular due to its simplicity and cheapness, but later it was supplanted around the early 2000s.
In 1967 (in the same year, by the way, the debut album of the Pink Floyd group was released), the NHK Technical Research Institute presented the first digital reel stereo recorder on an inch videotape.
The device developed at that time gave a start to the development of devices for recording digital sound.
Later in 1969, Sony introduced the world to a 13-bit digital stereo recorder, recording in this device was already carried out on a 2-inch tape, which made it possible to increase the duration and quality of the recording.
1970 Sony stereo recorder. These were used for studio recording of sound for the next 20-25 years.
Eight years later, at the Mitsubishi audio show, Sony and Hitachi present a prototype of digital audio CDs and LPs.
In 1979, Philips introduced a prototype CD for audio recording, later there were slight disagreements with Sony over the recording frequency.
Also during these events, the disc format was increased by 5 mm.
This disc could record 74 minutes of audio recording.
It is believed that the compact disc was invented by the physicist James Russell, then at Optical Recording, who created the number device for himself to prevent scratching the records. The device was presented back in 1971,
eight years later Philips presented a similar device.
Over the next two years, the compact disc format was formally proposed for standardization as a sound recording device.
In 1982, a standard for the compact disc system was adopted in Japan and Europe.
In the same year, Philips introduced the first CD player - the device was not like the previous ones and was revolutionary.
Philips player. The design of the device was impressive too.
By the way, the designs of modern turntables are partially similar to the design of this turntable.
Modern vinyl player from Yamaha.
The first album recorded on disc was the last album of ABBA - The Visitors.
Solemn presentation of the first serially released disc.
Also in 1982, Sony introduced a digital tape recording format called DASH, which was presented as an alternative to analog recording methods.
In 1984, Sony launched the first portable CD player. Its cost was $ 350.
The first portable turntable.
Later in 1987, the DAT format was released for recording digital audio onto cassettes. This format was conceived as an alternative to the popular compact cassettes, but was never able to
get the same mass distribution as compact cassettes.
DAT cassettes.
Also in 1987, the CEO of Apple (at that time called Apple Computers Inc.) John Scully (at that time Steve Jobs had already left the company) added to the popularity of disks, said that CDs would revolutionize the world of personal computers.
However, in the next 10-15 years, discs only gained popularity, but compact cassettes still held the lead due to their popularity and cheapness.
CDs reached the USSR only in 1989.
In 1992, digital Compact Cassette cassettes were introduced. They were offered as a home alternative to DAT cassettes, but these cassettes also failed in this venture to counter the compact cassettes, which
at the time still held a large market share for music sales.
In 1995, an audio compression format was developed such as MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3, or simply MP3.
The format made it possible to increase the duration of the audio recording that fit on the disk, however, there was still not enough space both on disks and on personal computers and it was difficult for ordinary people to exchange music.
In 1997, the Winamp software player was also created, which allowed listening to music files on a personal computer.
In 1998, the world saw the first full-fledged MP3 player MPMan, the price tag started at $ 400 with a minimum memory capacity of about 32 megabytes.
One of the samples of a player with a minimum memory size.
Part two. Early 2000s
Music conquers the Internet space
In 1999, 18-year-old Sean Fanning and his friends Sean Parker (who joined Facebook after the failure of Napster) and Jordon Ridder launched Napster. He used the peer-to-peer protocol (which later became the basis for the bit-torrent protocol) to exchange files.
The service has had a tremendous impact on people who have used the Internet and are really into music.
Napster allowed free and at the same time free sharing of music, and this created certain problems for the service in the form of allegations of copyright infringement.
The service existed relatively quietly for just over a year. In 2000, the reason for the lawsuit was the appearance on the service of a demo version of the song "I Disappear" by Metallica.
A lawsuit was filed, the result of which in 2001 was the purchase of a controlling stake by Private Media Group (an adult content production company), the
service was closed and later grew into a legal online music store (this happened around September 2008).
In the same year, Apple Computer Inc. Ipod was presented - a device that allows you to record music into the internal memory of the device through a computer, the minimum memory size was as much as 5 gigabytes.
The first iPod, a terrific device that can be used relatively comfortably even now.
In 2002, the Internet radio service Last.fm was launched. With the help of plug-ins for media players, it collects information about the music that users listen to, and based on the data obtained, it automatically creates individual playlists.
In 2003, Apple introduced the world to a legal way to listen to music via the Internet in the form of the iTunes Store service; the database of songs in the online store at the time of the presentation was over 200,000 tracks.
The next service that allowed you to legally and at the same time listen to music, audiobooks and podcasts for free was the Swedish service Spotify, which was launched in 2006. One of the company's key figures was also Sean Parker, who was looking for a startup at the time.
who would have continued the ideas of Napster, but in a legal way, he later invested about $ 15 million in Spotify and became a member of the Spotify board of directors.
Then I began to consider the collaboration of Facebook and Spotify, and as a result, Spotify users could publish their playlists to Facebook.
A year later, the SoundCloud service was launched, which also allowed you to listen to digitized sound works for free.
In the same year, the French service Deezer was launched, which also allowed listening to various record labels.
In 2010, Yandex introduced its streaming service Yandex.Music. The service is paid, without a subscription is available only in the CIS countries (except for Ukraine),
with a paid subscription it is available in all countries of the world.
In 2015, during the WWDC conference, Apple introduced the Apple Music service.
Music has really come a long way to get online and become more accessible than ever before.