Music business timeline
150 years of technology, radio, recording and music

The impact of technology on everyday life

Records as we know them were first sold in 1895 (the rotating disc was used until CD—there was even an early shellac disc which played from the centre outwards like CDs). Amplifiers followed a decade later (1907) but amplification for record players and radio didn’t arrive until 1925. Early amplified records were beyond most households and jukeboxes dominated USA record sales in the 1930s. The war boosted industry and communications but dampened consumption. Amplified record players arrived in every home during the 1950s and ‘60s and the first portable music player—transistor radio—in 1954. Stereo took hold in the late 1960s as corporate pop music emerged from the relentless consolidation of independent labels. In the early 1980s CDs launched the last and biggest phase of record sales. Finally, the overweight and over-priced physical album was ripe for competition and the download boom of 2000 was fuelled by a mass return to the cheaper single format.

It’s worth recalling how everyday life has been changed by the technology we now take for granted. Here’s an abbreviated sequence of music and technical developments over 130 years. I mostly ignore experimental demonstrations and prototypes in favour of changes visible to the general public (some may argue the Mellotron was a sampler etc. but that would rather miss the whole point—I show my choices for controversial innovations).

• before 1880—no telephone (Bell)
• before 1880—no home electricity
• before 1888—no cheap photography (Kodak Box Brownie)
• before 1893—no wireless telegraphy (Tesla)
• before 1895—no recorded music
• before 1913—no cinemas
• before 1918—no broadcast music and speech (radio)
• before 1919—no airliners
• before 1920—no scheduled radio entertainment
• before 1925—no amplification
• before 1926—no movies with sound
• before 1927—no transatlantic telephone
• before 1930—no amplification for musicians
• before 1930—no tape recorders
• before 1932—no electric guitars
• before 1935—no electric keyboards
• before 1937—no TV
• before 1945—no computers
• before 1948—no long playing albums
• before 1951—no home recording (reel-to-reel tape)
• before 1952—no pop music charts
• before 1954—no drum machines
• before 1962—no audio cassette
• before 1964—no pirate radio (Radio Caroline, Radio Veronica broadcast English for a time from 1962)
• before 1966—no colour TV
• before 1975—no home video (Standard 8 film from 1932)
• before 1975—no home computer
• before 1978—no home multi-track (Portastudio)
• before 1978—no sampling keyboard (Chamberlin 1948, Mellotron 1963, Fairlight 1979)
• before 1979—no Walkman
• before 1979—no digital audio
• before 1980—no CD
• before 1983—no MIDI
• before 1989—no SoundTools (later ProTools)
• before 1993—no web browsers
• before 1993—no audio online (IUMA Usenet)
• before 1995—no MP3s
• before 1995—no DVD
• before 1999—no “iPods” (Diamond Rio)
• before 1999—no P2P music (Napster)
• before 2002—no Major label store online (Listen.com)
• before 2003—no iTunes

Notice how home entertainment technology never stood still. This challenges the notion that our last decade (2000 to 2010) was particularly innovative, volatile, or disruptive. Imagine living between 1880 and 1910 (the same time interval as compact disc to present day): electricity, telephone, photography, and records became available; and in the next 15 years: cinema, radio, airliners, and amplification. I would argue the arrival of the Internet is not exceptional historically. The cultural step of telecommunication (from none) is surely steeper than from telecommunication to the network. Here is the detailed chronology.

Timeline: technology, record labels, publishing, people, music and events

Sources of information

The Major record label web sites:

• Universal Music Group history
• EMI Music history
• Warner Music Group history

Sony doesn’t have an official company history online Sony Music Entertainment history.

Useful books:

• Where Have All The Good Times Gone? by Louis Barfe
• Playback by Mark Coleman
• Hit And Run (How Jon Peters and Peter Guber took Sony for a ride in Hollywood) by Nancy Griffin & Kim Masters
• The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood Dennis McDougal
• Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes, and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group by Stan Cornyn & Paul Scanlon
• Stoned Andrew Loog Oldham
• The Sound Of The City Charlie Gillett
• The Rise And Fall Of EMI Records Brian Southall
• Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business Frederic Dannen
• White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s Joe Boyd
• Hippie Hippie Shake Richard Neville
• Howling at the Moon Walter Yetnikoff
• The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood Tom King
• Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out Bill Graham
• Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture Jac Holzman
• The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the demise of English rock John Harris
• The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Prize David Cavanagh
• England's Dreaming Jon Savage

Other sources:

Additional material was provided by Ray Pallett at Memory Lane magazine.