Music, and the high-fidelity audio equipment we play it on, has always been one of my passions. In fact, I first developed an interest in electronics in the early 1960's in response to volume level limitations imposed on me by my parents when playing "their" stereo. Since I was too poor to buy my own stereo system, I and a friend scrounged the parts from garbage cans behind TV and Radio repair shops (or outright begged at their front door!), and proceeded to build a vacuum tube audio amplifier (a whole 15 watts per channel!) to boost the output power of my little portable record player, saved up for a pair of Electrovoice high-fidelity wide-range speakers, and designed and built the wooden cabinets for them. And since it was mine, I could play that stereo system as loud as I wanted (despite parental grumblings)! And ever since then, I've always tried to own the best stereo equipment I could afford, although until recently I have never had as much music to play on it as I'd like!

A revolution has been going on in the music recording industry since the early 1990’s that is wholly unique in history. On one side is a large, wealthy, entrenched bureaucracy that has grown used to profiteering off musicians and music lovers for almost a century. On the other side are musicians, music lovers and a group of savvy Web entrepreneurs who are using direct distribution of digitized music via the Web as their opportunity to cut out the money-hungry middlemen who have been gouging everyone! This conflict has extremely complicated roots in technology, business, and politics. To understand the dynamics of this revolution you first have to understand a little history about how the business side of the traditional music recording industry works, the technology used for audio reproduction, and the politics the music business has instigated in response to changing technology, even prior to the Web.

The Business. (Disclaimer: I'm a technologist not a business major, so this view is strictly from a music lover's point of view!) The way the music business worked has its roots in practices that predate recording. Even though the industry is totally dependent on the inspiration and talent of musicians for its livelihood, it was a top-down driven business with the musician at the bottom, with a sordid history of abusing and discarding the creative people it is supposedly dependent on. They could do this because the musician was the last one in the "food chain" to reap profit from their art! The accounting in this industry was as creative as any you're liable to find, and even popularly successful albums that reach the top of the charts could somehow end up with the artist’s share "in the red" on paper when it comes time to pay the bills! Everyone else got paid up front first: the record label, recording studios, distributors and retailers all got their cut of the sale (and, of course, paying all these people in the middle also inflates the price that we have to pay for music!) The artist is lucky to make a fraction of a cent of each dollar paid for a record, CD or cassette! The labels also controlled who hears what records where, by controlling their distribution to the radio stations. This forced artists to the record labels' doors if they want anyone to hear their music. It also forceed artists that the record labels didn't think "have it" into obscurity. No telling how many really good artists over the years never got "air play" and were never discovered by the public.

The Technology. Digital media first became popular with the release of Compact Discs. But prior to the CD's popularity, all the media used to store audio were analog. The most-popular media prior to the CD was the phonograph record, which uses an etched groove in a plastic disk to move a needle connected to a "cartridge" which converts the needle's mechanical motion to an electrical signal. This media has recently gained a resurge in popularly among teens and college-age music lovers. The other popular method was magnetic tape, which uses changes in magnetic density on a tape moving across the head and converting those magnetic changes to an electrical signal. Both of these methods have problems that affect the quality of the audio signal produced during play-back, caused mainly due to the mechanics of the technology.

• Phonograph records have technological limitations that make them a less-than-ideal media for music reproduction. They are susceptible to:
  
  • Noise caused by dust and dirt (which the plastic media easily attracts via static electricity!)
  
  
  • "Pops and clicks" caused by scratches in the relatively-soft plastic.
  
  
  • Low-frequency "rumble" imparted by imperfections in the transport that turns the record.
  
  
  • Limits on dynamic range (the maximum difference between the quietest and loudest sounds on the record), caused by a limit in the distance you can "throw" the needle back and forth, particularly at high frequencies.
  
  
  • Frequency variations caused by the turntables's speed inaccuracies.
  
  
  • "Thumps" and other spurious sounds picked up by the needle from the environment (bumping the table, stomping on the floor, etc.) which are picked up by the cartridge and converted to sound.
  
  
  • Induced feedback loops caused by high sound levels out of the speakers (common in a hard rock-rich environment! We blew a woofer that way once)!
  
  
  Worst of all, the very act of playing a record slowly damages the grooves of the record! Rabid audiophiles would only play a record once to record it to magnetic tape, and then only play the recording! These limitations of the medium drove the mechanics of the "turntables" used to play records:
  
  • Heavy bases made of exotic sound-dampening materials with "shock absorbing" feet to limit sound induction
  
  
  • Direct-drive motors with electronic speed regulation and exotic sensors to ensure constant speed (once you let it warm up for 15 minutes or so!)
  
  
  • A built in stroboscope to verify platter speed, and a speed control knob.
  
  
  • High-mass balance-beam arms with adjustable counterweights to hold the needle cartridge and apply a constant but low force on the record (to limit damage!).
  
  
  • Specially-shaped needles to optimize frequency response (equal amplitude across the audible frequency spectrum — the Holy Grail of audio!) and further reduce record damage.
  
  
  • Numerous exotic moving-magnet and piezoelectric cartridge schemes to maximize frequency response.

  Records typically sold in two formats: the "long playing (LP) album", which turned at 33.33 revolutions per minute (RPM); and a smaller "single" which turned at 45RPM.



• Analog tape: although it is an inherently better, quieter media than records, analog audio tape has its own limitations:
  • Noise — called "hiss" — caused by the friction of mechanical imperfections in the tape as it is pulled across the head.
  
  
  • Dynamic range limitations, caused by magnetic saturation: the signal is "written" to the tape by changing the state of magnetic particle on the tape. The more particles changed, the louder the sound. However, once all the particles are changed, you can't change any more. That's called the "saturation point." Beyond that point, increasing the amplitude of the signal being recorded makes no difference in the amplitude of the recorded signal.
  
  
  • Slow variations in amplitude called "wow," caused by changes in tape speed, alignment or tension.
  
  
  • A higher-frequency variation in amplitude called "flutter," which is usually caused by mechanical imperfections in the rollers the tape travels over.
  
  
  • Momentary drops in amplitude called "drop-outs", which are caused by magnetic imperfections in the tape's magnetic coating.
  
  
  • High frequency loss if the tape heads become partially magnetized.
  
  
  • A limited useful life, caused by a feature called "retentivity," which describes how long the tape remains magnetized enough to retain a useable signal. Magnetic media (including floppy disks, Zip disks, hard drives, etc.!) slowly lose its signal over time, even just sitting on the shelf!
  
  
  • And, of course, tape is always under threat of physical damage if it finds its way off the reel, or near heat!
  
  
  As with records, limitations of the tape medium drive the mechanics of the tape transport:
  
  • Precision bearings and high-tolerance machined guide postsand capstans (the revolving post that actually moves the tape)
  
  
  • Pinch rollers made from exotic rubber or plastic compounds that won't deform
  
  
  • Numerous transport methodologies to maintain constant tape tension over the head (dual capstans, reverse tension on the feed reel, etc.)

  Before introduction of the Compact Disc, records were the primary medium for purchasing original music content, although music was also sold on both compact cassettes and 8-Track tapes. Audio tape, particularly reel-to-reel format, was the primary medium for professional recording, and many audiophiles for home recording, although the most used medium for home recording was the compact cassette. Prior to the CD, home recording was of only of minor concern to the recoding industry, since analog phonograph records were far beyond the capability of home users to reproduce, and tape recordings were not very good recording sources for copying, since each copy included not only its own imperfections, but those imparted to the original by the device it was recorded on, causing each succeeding generation of recording to be of poorer quality than the copy it was copied from.

• Compact Discs. This new media changed everything by eliminaing all the imperfections and limitations inheritant in previous media:
  
  • The signal is digital: ones and zeros etched onto a metal film sandwiched inside a clear plastic disc.
  
  
  • The digital data that makes up the content is generally read into memory faster than it can be converted to an analog signal and played back, so imperfections in speed due to flaws in the transport mechanism are no longer important, and imperfections like hiss, rumble, wow, or flutter can't be imparted to the audio by the mechanism. This meant that the CD transport could be manufactured using relatively inexpensive, low-tolerance components compared to record turntables and tape devices.
  
  
  • The encoded surface that holds the digital data is protected by a clear plastic cover and read by a light beam that doesn't contact the medium, so the content is relatively indestructible, playing it doesn't degrade its quality, and dust or dirt can't reach the digital data to add clicks and pops! The only noise you get is that included during the master recording process!

  So, for the first time what we have is a near-perfect, noise and interference-free, damage-resistant medium. While most professional recordings these days are mixed down direct to a digital master using computers and custom software, until recently analog audiotape was still the primary home recording medium. However, with the advent of inexpensive CD-Recordable (CD-R) "burners" in home computers, and the rapidly decreasing cost of the CD-R media (and later DVD-R media!) in the last few years, CD-R has fast become the most popular home recording medium!
  

• Enter MP3. MP3 files are named after the three-character file extension (song.mp3 for example) used to identify what is the most-popular digital audio file format to date. MP3 is shorthand for MPEG-3, which itself is an acronym that stands for Motion Picture Experts Group Level 3, or MPEG-3, a standard for audio compression. As the name implies, MPEG compression, which included specifications for both video and audio, was originally developed as part of a standard for digital video, back when the industry was sure the big 12-inch LaserDisc was going to replace VHS tape for digital video in the same way the CD replaced the phonograph record (hence the name of the group!). LaserDiscs never really caught on (why is a story for another time!). But as CD-ROM drives became popular computer peripherals (primarily for installing and running software), the MPEG standard already existed, so the developing multimedia software market grabbed MPEG and ran with it to encode video and audio on CDs. Thus MPEG, a standard developed by the motion picture and recording industries, instead found new life as a standard for video and audio in computer software.
  
  It was only a short matter of time before some smart cookies figured out that the audio portion of the standard would make a good format for sharing their favorite tunes, since it reduced the file size quite nicely, and MP3 file sharing was born! At first, the quantities being exchanged were not public enough or in significant enough quantities to attract the music/recording industry's attention. Then the World Wide Web happened, and everything changed! Online distribution of MP3 files began small, with users (mostly college students) swapping their favorite tunes via e-mail and Usenet newsgroups. The MP3 files typically created by converting the CD audio tracks into MP3 files (a process called "ripping") and PC software quickly emerged to automate the process! In all honesty, the primary use of MP3 files in the beginning was to distribute music pirated from CDs. (This reminds me of the early days of the computer software industry, when piracy of over-priced software was rampant until the software publishers found out they sold a lot more software and had less piracy if the software was reasonably priced!) However, there were three influences that were destined to turn MP3 files into a medium that is today widely used to distribute original media:
  • The first of these was a group of far-thinking artists, including Todd Rundgren and the Grateful Dead’s late Jerry Garcia. Todd has always been a technologist and has continually been on the forefront of using the latest technology to produce, record and now distribute his music. So it wasn't surprising that he early on recognized the potential of the new distribution idea and embraced it. Jerry's group, the Grateful Dead, was well known for allowing the free recording and distribution of their live performances, and before his death he blessed extending that free distribution to MP3 files on the Web.
  
  
  • Other musicians, disenchanted with the traditional record label process for various reasons, also began putting out digital samples of their music online in MP3 files. Web-aware music lovers (again, mostly college students at first), quickly found and shared music files, and the knowledge of music as it became available on the Web quickly spread.
  
  
  • Pretty soon, music lovers who were also Web-savvy entrepreneurs saw the opportunity in setting up commercial Web sites where musicians could sell their music directly to their fans, and sites like MP3.COM and Goodnoise were born. But since the demographic of the typical MP3 listener was that of college kids listening to tunes on their PCs, the music recording industry didn't like it, but still wasn't very concerned . . . until Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing came along (I've devoted a separate page on that subjet)!

  The Politics of Audio Technology. To understand the politics, it pays to go back to the early 90's again. Soon after the introduction of the Compact Disc, the music recording industry was faced with what it saw as a dilemma: it had this small, near perfect, inexpensive medium for music distribution that was catching on like wildfire! But the industry feared that if a digital recording device were to successfully come on the scene (which Sony's Digital Audio Tape was about to do!), consumers would have the ability to make perfect digital copies of their CDs, and CD sales would plummet! The industry had no expectation that they could get digital recording outlawed outright, since the "fair use" right to copy music for non-commercial use had been settled in court years earlier. So they fought for and managed to get on the books the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-563, title 17 of the United States Code). This law required any digital recording device as specified in the law had to have technology incorporated in it to limit it to copying only original media, and block the copying of a copy. And they made sure that every recording device they could think of at the time was specified in the law . . . except computers! No one at the time thought that anyone but professionals and a few serious amateurs would ever use computers to record music, since the buy-in cost in hardware and software at the time was prohibitive, and was pretty much limited at the time to the professional mastering of music by the music industry itself. This law was bitterly opposed by both audio hardware manufacturers and audiophiles, and its adoption basically put an end to the nascent Digital Audio Tape recorder market. The DAT format lives on today, but only as a medium for computer tape backup devices (yeah, techies, that's why it's called DAT!). Understandably, us old audiophiles are still pissed off at the music recording industry about this!

  At this point, the music recording industry figured they had a legal lockout on unrestricted home digital recording, and life was good. For them at least. But the promise of the CD medium was never fully realized for us. When first released, CDs were priced somewhat higher than records, supposedly to "offset development costs." But even though production costs eventually dropped to only pennies each, the price for CDs never dropped significantly for many years! Nor did artists ever reap any significant windfall from the increased profits (that creative accounting again!). In fact, most big-label artists today receive so little profit from CDs that they look at CD sales as "free advertising," and depend primarily on concert ticket sales and merchandizing for their profits.

  The explosion of MP3 on the Web took the music business by surprise. It shouldn't have. For the first time artists have a venue where they could put out their music their way. No one telling them how to play it. No one to tell them they can't play it! For the first time, any artist could put their music up in front of the music lover, who now has a venue to find it! All the artificial "filters" keeping the artist and the music lover apart are gone. The online music business was kicked up significantly when Apple started up its iTunes music service, which is by far the most successful online media seller to date.

  The online business model is much more advantageous to both the artist and the music lover as well. The only middleman in the process is the Web site, most of which aren't greedy, so the artist gets the lion's share of the purchase price. And the music lover gets their music much cheaper that they could from the record store (typically $1.00 a song). Understandably, both the artists and the music lovers love it!

  The traditional music business hated it. Even worse, they feared it. And worst of all for them, there was precious little they could do to stop it:

  • The MP3 files were produced via computer, which is legal since computers were specifically excluded from the Audio Home Recording Act.
  
  
  • The distribution method itself was legal (again, I'll cover Napster etc. elsewhere), and well within existing laws covering intellectual property, since the artists are being recompensed for their work.
  The only ones being left out in the cold with empty pockets are the middlemen of the music/recording industry. And the years of ill will they engendered among musicians, music lovers and audiophiles ensured that very few people (other than maybe their lawyers!) cared if their industry went "belly up!" But they have never intended to go down gracefully, so they've been employing a lot of those lawyers over the years trying to stop, slow down or buy our digital music sales and distribution systems.

  Their lawyers' first target was Diamond's Rio MP3 file player. As long as listening to MP3 files was limited to people sitting in front of their PCs, the music recording industry was apparently not overly concerned over MP3 audio, since nobody was suing anyone. But the Rio, patterned after the popular portable cassette players like Sony’s Walkman preceding it, allowed listeners to take 60 minutes’ worth of MP3 audio on the go. This threatened to increase MP3 file popularity. So the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Diamond Multimedia, claiming the Rio (which can only play back MP3 files!) was an illegal "digital recording device" under the Audio Home Recording Act. I know! It was a stupid argument that I don't think even industry thought would be successful. Their attempt to get the judge to issue a preliminary injunction to stop sales of the Rio failed, and Diamond starting selling Rios as fast as they could build them (a local shop here had a one-month waiting list for a while!). By the time Diamond won the suit (with the judge ruling that the Rio wasn't a recording device but rather a computer peripheral and therefore exempt under the Audio Home Recording Act!), they had already sold over 100,000 Rios at around $200 each (including one to me)! So, the RIAA lost round one to the good guys, and consumer electronics companies sould millions of MP3 players, including Apple's popular iPod! Even better, this opened the way for virtually every smartphone sold having a built-in musc player app, and plenty of storage space to save a library of hundreds of MP3 files! It also had led to a new audiophile component: the Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC)!

  Where we stand:

  • Legal MP3 Sales. The movement of recorded music to MP3 and other digital files sold online has massively changed the music market. Record stores have all but disappeared. You can still buy CDs online, but most music lovers don't bother to buy and rip CDs when the MP3 files are already easily and cheaply available online via sites like Apple iTunes, Amazon Music, and Google Music. So at the moment it appears this is a won battle . . . for now!
  
  
  • Music Streaming. Many younger music lovers are ignoring MP3 files altogether and choosing to stream music from paid music streaming services like Spotify and Pandora.
    My concern about media streaming, be it music or video, is that the customer has no guarantee that their favorite songs will be there online forever. The reason? New music is being created all the time, and whether the streaming srvices like it or not, that new music needs to be saved to a server hard dive array somewhere! And as time goes on, at some point storing the necessary exabytes of content will become an issue. When that point is reached, a decision must be made: buy more storage space or start deleting relatively unused content. Given that the cost of buying more space is not trivial, and deleting content is essentially free, which option do you think streaming services will eventually choose? That's why I want to buy my content and preserve my copies. That way I know they won't be going anywhere!
  
  
  • Online Video Streaming. Online services like YouTube, have become the latest avenue for new music acts to bypass the record companies and present their music directly to music lovers, then move their music directly to digital distribution!

  Bottom line? It appears that music is finally, firmly in the hands of artists and music lovers, and the people in the middle are few and frugally taking a cut to deliver the products.