Key Changes gives the reader a comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and engaging history of the the technologies that changed and modified the music industry for more than a 100 years.
From vinyl cylinders to 78 rpm vinyl albums, to 33 1/3 vinyl albums, to 45 rmp vinyl singles, to 8-track tapes, to cassette tapes, to digital Compact Disks, to Internet downloads, to streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt show how these technologies were developed and then rolled out commercially.
One of the many surprises in Key Changes is Thomas Edison’s belief that his new device was initially restricted: “Edison said later that he was never so taken aback in his life. He foresaw a wide range of uses for the phonograph, including recording speeches and music as well as enabling talking clocks and toys. However, he viewed the feature of making recordings as essential to fulfill its primary mission as a business dictation machine.” (p. 18). Edison was a little off in that prediction.
From cylinders and discs played on early phonographs; then moving through radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads, streaming, and streaming video, Key Changes explores all the major changes in the music industry with incisive analysis. If you’re a music fan, there’s a lot of wonderful stories of music history in Key Changes! Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS — ix
- Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On (Jerry Lee Lewis) — Introduction — 1
2. You Spin Me Round [Like a Record] (Dead or Alive) — Phonograph — 17
3. I Can’t Live Without My Radio (LLCool J) — Radio — 59
4. Spin the Black Circle (Pearl Jam) — Vinyl LPs and 45s — 97
5. Rhymin’ and Stealin’ (The Beastie Boys) — 8-Track & Cassette Tapes — 138
6. Television Rules the Nation (Daft Punk) — Television & Music — 156
7. Zero-Sum (Nine Inch Nails) — The Compact Disc — 189
8. Don’t Download This Song (“Weird Al” Yankovic) — Downloads — 215
9. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel) — Streaming — 255
10. Throw Away Your Television (Red Hot Chili Peppers) — Streaming Video — 293
11. You Took the Words Right Out of my Mouth (Meatloaf) — Voice Interfaces & Artificial Intelligence — 326
12. Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper) — Coda — 353
13. Unchained Melody (Righteous Brothers) — Afterword: Blockchain Technologies — 383
- Notes — 395
- References — 413
- Bibliography — 449
- Index — 479
Sounds interesting, but…nah, got too much else to read. We geezers do remember most of those. When I was a kid, I think my mother still had a few 78s, or at least I seem to remember them. My father was big on stereo LPs and we had our 45s. In fact, that was one of the few worldly goods I berought when we got married – over 500 45s, most of them from the 1960s. One thing – we never had 8-tracks. At one point, we had a lot of cassettes and I spent plenty of time making tapes of my own, but we all know the problems of cassette tapes: much like the later video tapes, they broke and tangled and got ruined after a lot of use. Unlike most of you, I’m sure, we drew the line at CDs and do NOT download music from the internet. That is the final line we drew.
And keep off my lawn!
Jeff, my mother and father loved music especially Broadway soundtracks. I must have heard their vinyl album of MY FAIR LADY a 100 times. My sisters were into 45s and played them constantly. I was an album guy from the beginning. Like you, I recorded songs onto cassettes. And, like you, no 8-tracks. I bought a Sony CD player early in the 1980s and replaced most of my vinyl albums with their CD counterparts. Patrick and Katie think I’m crazy for buying CDs–they stream all their music–but I love the whole music CD experience: jewel box, liner notes, track list, etc.
Bill Crider used to talk about 8-tracks a lot.
Jeff, our cars had cassette players in them (until CDs took over), but not 9-tracks. Bill was fond of 8-tracks.
I like alternating fiction and non-fiction although this one may be too technological for me. Still I like the premise.
Patti, KEY CHANGES includes a few technical sections, but most of the book is written for folks like us to understand how music got transformed by technology. I learned a lot!
Looks like an interesting read but I’d find it too depressing by the end. I grew up with vinyl and still have strong memories of even just looking at albums I never bought let alone the ones I took home. Whenever I’d visit another city I’d invariably spend more time hanging out in their record stores than I did sightseeing. I was working in a record store when CDs came out and quickly became the rabid conspicuous consumption fad of yuppies. It really was weird so I understood the animosity a lot of people felt toward the format although the old vinyl guys did get exhausting after awhile.
I managed a couple of record stores during the glory days of the CD in the nineties when the record companies were opening their vaults to their long neglected gold mines of forgotten master tapes. It was just wondrous especially if you were into classical music and jazz not to mention Nonesuch’s world music and Smithsonian Folkways’ roots music treasure troves.
What ultimately poisoned the well was the unabashed greed of the labels, steadily raising their prices when they should have been lowering them. It was openly acknowledged at the time that they thought CDs should be as expensive as hardcover books and were shooting for a $25 price tag. By the time CDRs and later Napster came along a lot of people were well primed to steal music even if the latent kleptomania of f the Americans was the ultimate deciding factor.
While I do think that some of the vinyl revival is motivated by a genuine desire of people to have a more intimate connection to their music I don’t delude myself that much of it is just another variation of the coffee table book and people buy records as much to leave them out to be seen as to be listened to.
There are a few classical stations I’ll stream (but I still prefer the radio) and I’ll sometimes use Bandcamp to check out new music but I’m very much a CD person. What streaming and piracy has done to rob musicians of an income is crimminal.
Edison tried selling an early version of a talking doll early on in the phonograph era and the records within the dolls were cut by having women screaming dialogue into recording horns. The results were the stuff of nightmares particularly given that the dolls themselves were already pretty creepy looking.
Byron, I’m still dubious that streaming music services provide CD quality sound. Like you, I’m very much a CD person although 90% of my new music purchases are online because we only have a couple record stores still open. You’re right about corporate greed wrecking the incomes of musicians. When Diane and I went to a Steely Dan concert a few years ago, Donald Fagan admitted he was touring because album sales were so minimal and iTunes and Spotify paid pennies in royalties.