In this time of uncertainty, however, recording technology developed significantly. The combination of the expansion of broadcast radio and the Great Depression dealt a severe blow to the record industry. Incidentally, that decade proves a poignant example for comparison to our own time. That his middle chapter is “The Crucial 1930s” illustrates as much. Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology is a helpful guide to the journey.ĭavid L. The long and winding road from the “phonautograph” recording demonstration in 1857 France to the ubiquitous MP3 of today is full of wrong turns and stubborn resistance to change (new Edison wax cylinders were still available for purchase into the 1960s, for example). Recording on tinfoil? Wax? Even compared to an 8-track tape, that is downright primitive. By the time I was in high school (2002), anyone my age knew how to get anything digital for free.Sound Recording: The Lifestory of a TechnologyĮarly attempts at sound recording were a bit like my own pre-teen efforts at coding a card game in BASIC-interesting and mildly promising, but resulting in a marginally useful outcome. The thought of all this being illegal most likely didn’t even cross my mind at the time: it was a revelation, something totally unexpected but that opened the door to limitless possibilities I could have complete access to the music I wanted, quickly, at no cost. A friend of a friend could access a website where you could get any album you wanted, for free and in a matter of hours: his music collection, made exclusively of burned CDs, was immense. As my music taste shifted towards heavier sounds, I began to realize that CDs were often difficult to find and always very expensive: and that’s when I came across file-sharing. Two years later I started middle school, and my interest in music became an obsession.
At home, we used our old Aiwa Hi-fi system to play vinyl from my parents’ vast collection of classical music (my mother was an opera singer) and psychedelic rock (my father was a teenager in the late 60’s). He bought Nirvana’s Unplugged for himself, on tape. I was 9 at that time, but I still remember when my father took me to the local music shop to buy Offspring’s Americana. Having spent my childhood in the Italian countryside, I had the opportunity to experience the rise of digital music in slow-motion.
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