HISTORY OF MUSIC DISTRIBUTION AND FROM THE PHONOGRAPH TO SPOTIFY: THE HISTORY OF STREAMING MUSIC

TIMELINE

The Beginning

• Music has been around across the ages, however it was formally introduced by the Greeks to play music for entertainment, as it was an essential to the majority of celebrations 
• They were also responsible for many of the composition techniques of music such as; "octaves", "scale" and "diatonic".

Sheet Music

• Sheet music was in a time way before recorded music, some even dated back to the Babylonians and was only really useful for those who could also read music to reproduce it. 
• At the same time, people would visit theatres to listen to music or make it them self.
• This was formally introduced by the Greeks as it was an essential to the majority of celebrations 

Physical Recordings

Spillers (1984)

• The Phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, which was actually aiming to be an improved adaption of the earlier Telegraph. He thought it would be easier to send recorded verbal messages, and it did do what he intended but was found far more popular for a means of listening to recorded music. 
• This allowed people to visit 'phonograph parlours' to listen to recorded music. This has some similarity to the later jukebox.
• Records were made from very frail and brittle, shellac that often sounded scratchy and very rarely lasted long amounts of time. 
• It was not until the vinyls were created in the 1930's that the scene got extremely popular, which only really happened because after WW2, the materials needed for the shellac records were limited. 
• Vinyls dominated the recorded music market, until the late 70's in which cassettes had been developed and better quality. Making music more portable, things like 'driving music' became more personal because people could. now choose what music they want to listen to in the car rather than the radio
• Later, ABBA's, "The Visitors", was the first commercially recorded compact disk (1981), which then dominated all its predecessors.
• Not long after blow up from the Compact Disk, Sony released the 'Walkman' in 1979, making music more portable than ever before. Cassettes could be played on the go rather than just in the car or stereo. Then Sony released the 'Diskman', so the same could be done with CD's. 

Digital Era

• MP3 player was invented in the late 1980's resulting in a compression of music digital files leading to music downloading via the internet. 
• Unfortunately, the ease of being able to download music illegally via said internet made the music capitol to decrease by 50% between 1999 - 2009, however there was a means to download it legally for some time until Apple developed iTunes. 
• Before iTunes, however there was a plethora of music download sites such as Napster, Grooveshark, Youtube Converter etc, which had a huge negative impact on the music industry. A lot of these sites actually were not legal and copyrighted a lot. 
• "1997 Economist article “Tremble, Everyone,” which warned of the internet cannibalising nearly every industry -- music included -- by introducing online buying options."
• We know they predicted accurately with this article, because not long after, the iPod was invented which changed everything.
• "Around 2014, courts around the world issued notices requiring internet service providers to block sites that were knowingly aiding in the dissemination of copyrighted works through torrents (and other means)."

Legal Digital Download Sites 

• Finally iTunes was released in 2004. By 2008 it became the biggest vender of music in the USA
• In 2004, Beatport was released. Electronic music downloading system that became popular very quickly
• In the US, revenues from digital music sales surpassed physical sales for the first time in 2012, while in the UK it took until 2014 for this to happen.

Streaming Services

• Spotify and streaming services alike, have been under fire for the low revenue per stream the services provides for artists
• However, after receiving this criticism, Spotify have stated that 70% of their revenues go to the rights- holders and argued that their service diverts people from illegal download and opposing sites which do not do this. 

• Youtube remains the largest streaming service across the world however, a huge proportion of the music uploaded on there without rights' holders consent.After much debate on whether (legal) streaming services ‘cannibalise’ sales, a report by published in October 2015 by researchers at the University of Minnesota concluded that their effect is more or less ‘revenue neutral’.