The Soundtrack to Our Lives

A brief history of music and technology.

Technology gets a bad rap—particularly media technology. When the television was invented, people feared that it would make people dumb, lazy, and unhappy. This happened, to an extent. When cellphones arrived on the scene, this fear increased tenfold, and with similar results. Young people today are dumber than their parents, who are dumber than their parents. Plenty of bad things can be said about the machines that run our lives.

However, if there’s one thing that’s actually benefited from this onslaught of new technology, it’s music.

I know, I know. Spotify is bad for artists. Musicians can’t sell albums anymore. The popular music that’s coming out today might be the worst in history. It doesn’t seem like the music industry is doing well.

I’m not talking about money. Or even musicians.

I’m talking about listening to music—an activity that has been revolutionized by the creation of portable devices. The ‘musical revolution’ began with the invention of the Walkman, and now, the cellphone has perfected it.

Before the invention of the Walkman in 1979, music was static. If you wanted to listen to a particular song or artist, you had to play the album at home or go to a concert. You couldn’t just put on your ‘Pump It Up!’ playlist and go for a jog. The most portable piece of equipment available was a car radio (or car cassette player, once those came out). Solitary walks must have been brutal.

More importantly, though, this meant that listening to music was something deliberate. If you didn’t care enough about music to go to the store and buy an album, you just listened to whatever came on the radio.

This must have drastically limited the variety of music one could listen to. Accessing a band’s full discography was expensive. Have five or six favorite bands? Do the math. Want to check out a new album from a new artist? Unless you’ve heard a few songs on the radio or have a friend with a copy you can borrow, it’s a literal gamble. It’s not like a record was the price of a mortgage, but costs add up.

Even the invention of records (both vinyl and the heavy, fragile, shellac that came before them) was revolutionary. Before record players, the only way to record a song was to write it down and then have someone else play it. None of the nuance could be captured. Once artists died, their music died with them. No wonder all classical music sounds the same (sorry, classical music fans).

There’s something special about a physical music collection that a digital library just can’t replicate. Similarly, albums are more meaningful when you sit down down and really make an event out of them. ‘Audiophiles’ aren’t just being assholes—music really does sound better on vinyl. However, arguing that this is the only way one should listen to music is absurd. They’re too bulky. Too delicate.

Cassettes changed the game. They were more portable; you could shove them in a pocket or a purse without them breaking in half. Their smaller size meant that the devices that played them could be portable, too. Enter the boombox. The Walkman. Now you could take your music anywhere.

Thus, music became something private. You could always listen to music alone, of course. You could play a record at home, or listen to the radio on a solitary drive. But it wasn’t possible for twenty people to listen to twenty different songs in a single train car. If there were other people around, you were all listening to the same music.

The audio cassette brought with it another cool development: playlists. Well, they weren’t called playlists back then. They were called mixtapes. But it’s the same concept. You take a bunch of songs that you like and put them together in one place. They don’t have to be from the same artist, or even the same genre, but they’re often grouped together in a deliberate sort of way. In a small, personalized way, the listener becomes part of the creative process.

Then came the CD, and the Internet a decade or so after. This was cool, because now you could put music onto a CD from a computer. Mixtapes were easier to make, and they sounded better. Instead of recording a cassette tape and hoping none of your friends coughed halfway through a song, you could put the original song straight on there. However, the main ‘revolutionary’ change that came from the advent of the CD (and, of course, the internet), was the ability to download music illegally.

Yup. That ever-present cost barrier was gone. Not officially, of course. Albums were still available for sale on CDs, and people still bought them. But let’s say you were a kid, and your $2-a-week allowance didn’t cover the twenty new releases from your twenty favorite bands. Napster had your back.

Then came the iPod, which made portable music even better. The device was sleeker and smaller. Acquiring music was instantaneous. You could buy an album from the comfort of your home at the click of a button, and transfer them onto your device just as easily. You could download songs without paying just as easily (probably from Limewire, since Napster was taken down in the same year the first iPod was released).

We all know what happens next. Enter the iPod touch. Now, with a wireless internet connection, you can access all the music you want without ever touching a computer (if you’re willing to pay for it, that is).

Shortly afterwards came the iPhone, which was basically like an iPod touch and a phone combined, and you didn’t even need to be connected to Wi-Fi to use it! This was massive. Bye bye, iPod. Now you only needed one device in your pocket. And now, you could listen to music anywhere, anytime, without even thinking about it.

The next change was streaming. Spotify came out in 2008, but started to really make a presence for itself sometime around 2012. By 2015, it had basically replaced the iTunes Store (prompting the release of Apple Music), and had put a significant dent in illegal downloads, too.

Thus, the modern method of music enjoyment was born. Most music today is played from a smartphone running some type of streaming service. The stuff has never been more accessible, more convenient, or more personalized.

Whenever someone talks about technology ‘ruining’ music, they usually mention two things. The first is that people don’t buy music anymore. The second is that the increased popularity of singles ruined the art of ‘the album.’

The former point is true. Illegally downloading music was for kids; adults actually paid for their music. Doing it the legal way is just easier. Would you rather pay ten bucks for an album, or download millions of viruses onto a laptop that cost you upwards of a thousand dollars?

However, if you can pay $11 to access any song you can think of, it’s a no-brainer. Music fans are spending less money on music than they used to (although it could be argued that the average person is spending more), and musicians are seeing a significantly smaller percentage of that money.

Artists are paid between $.003 and $.005 per listen. Let’s say you listen to an average 20 songs per day (a high but reasonable estimate for someone with a long commute who really likes music). That’s about 600 songs a month. If we multiply that by $.005, the most generous estimate of how much artists would be making, that’s $3 in total ‘raised’ per month, split proportionally.

This $3-per-listener seems to be a fairly decent estimate of the middle-of-the-road Spotify user. All the student discounts and family plans are probably balanced out by the people who only average about 5 songs a day, bringing their estimate down to only 75 cents.

The remaining $8/month isn’t just going to Spotify, of course. They claim to keep 30% of their profits (which would be $3.30 of every $11 subscription). The rest of the proceeds go to the record labels and other middlemen that have been hacking away at musicians’ earnings for decades.

Forgive me if these calculations suck. My research was rushed, and I’m terrible at math. Double-check the numbers if it’s important to you. As an approximation, though, it does the job. Even the biggest Spotify apologist has to admit that the deal has gotten worse for the average musician.

However, for the people who claim that it ‘destroyed real music’ or whatever—you’re just wrong. The same amount of people who would’ve listened to a full album in 1975 will listen to a full album today. The average Spotify listener who doesn’t buy any music would’ve listened to the radio and still not bought any music if it were the 1960s. Plenty of people just don’t care about music.

The people who do—well, they buy tickets to live shows. They buy merchandise at those shows. They have vinyl record collections. They listen to albums.

It’s tempting to be nostalgic for a past that doesn’t exist. And the world in which everyone had overflowing record collections and listened to concept albums in full every day never existed.

Bands always made catchy singles that could be played on the radio. The ‘45 was invented so record labels could make money off of people who only cared about a band’s one hit song. Albums were always full of filler, save for the really, really good ones (and really good ones still exist).

The only real downside I can think of is that, since everyone always has a smartphone with an Internet connection, there’s really no need for semi-skilled campfire guitarists anymore.

That part genuinely sucks. It must’ve been fun to learn three chords and then have your friends actually want to listen to you play music.

Music’s purpose has changed. Evolved, rather. It comes with us everywhere we go. Its range has broadened.

There are albums that are great for a morning commute. Some are great for gloomy mornings. Some for optimistic, energetic mornings. Some are great for a jog. Some are perfect for a brisk walk in the afternoon, or a contemplative one at sunset.

Of course, there have always been falling-in-love albums and break-up albums. Albums to get you through a difficult week. Albums to jam to when your spirits are high. It’s amazing that we can now take these with us wherever we go.

And it doesn’t hurt that now, some of these can double as ‘reminding-yourself-that-life-isn’t-all-bad-while-you’re-in-the-waiting-room-of-the-dentist’ albums.

I can’t imagine it. Without this accompaniment, life would be a whole lot duller.