Chapter 3

Some guiding questions
 How did the technologies for sound recording develop?
 How did popular music become a mass media industry?
 What was the influence of rock-and-roll on two media industries?
 What companies control the sound recording industry today?

How has popular music made an impact upon
20th-century American culture?

What role has recorded music played in your life?
How has it shaped and reflected your identity?

What has been the relationship between rock music and youth culture ?

INNOVATIONS IN MEDIA
TECHNOLOGY
 3 developmental stages :
 NOVELTY stage
 ENTREPRENEURIAL stage
 CONSUMER MARKETING stage

Early sound recording technology
 deMartinville , France,
1850s
 Edison , USA, 1877
 Berliner , USA, 1880s
 Victor Talking Machine ,
USA, 1900s

Forms of recording
 Edison’s wax cylinders : analog recording
 Berliner’s flat disk --> vinyl records
 Magnetic audiotape (Germany, 1940s)
 stereo sound (1950s)
 digital recording (1970s)
 compact discs (1980s)
 audio DVDs

Listening to recorded music
 -Victrolas --> electric record players (1900s-
1920s)
 -1915: 30 million phonograph records sold
 -Music was played and consumed individually

 issues of paying to broadcast copyrighted music
 1914: ASCAP founded to collect copyright fees for music writers and publishers
 In 1924, radio competition cut record sales in half
 However, costs of royalties forced many radio stations off the air

1930s:
Period of courtship between radio and recording industry
THEIR MARRIAGE
TOOK PLACE IN THE
1950s

 Appeals to broad public or to demographic sub-groups
 appeals to popular (that is, not just highbrow) tastes and styles
 Includes blues, country, Tejano, salsa, jazz, rock, reggae, rap, hip hop, easy listening

 Mass-marketed publishing of sheet music:
Tin Pan Alley
 Birth of JAZZ in New Orleans: fusing rhythm & blues and gospel into swing bands
 popular vocal stars (harmonies and crooners)
 ROCK AND ROLL

ROCK AND ROLL is born!
 Fused traditions of country, R&B, pop
 Significantly merged music of black and white cultures in the American South
 No music style has ever had such widespread impact
 Transformed the structure of two mass media industries: recording and radio

ROCK MUSIC BLURRED
BOUNDARIES
 High and low culture
 Masculine and feminine
 Black and white
 North and South
 Sacred and secular

SCANDALS in the
MUSIC INDUSTRY
 Payola : the practice of record promoters paying DJ’s to play their songs on the air
 Congressional hearings in
1959
 1998: promotional strategy called pay-for-play emerged

A CHANGING INDUSTRY post-1960
 The British Invasion : sound recording goes international
 Development of Soul and the Motown label
 Political impact of folk rock
 Punk and grunge movements
 Rap and the rise of black urban style

 Broadly, folk music = songs performed by untrained musicians and passed down through oral traditions
 Considered a democratic and participatory form
 Folk music popularized by radio and by grassroots activists like Woody Guthrie, who championed peace and social justice

-Mix of R&B, rock, pop and gospel
-Motown label founded by
Berry Gordy in 1960 in
Detroit

Folk-Rock and Sixties
Counterculture
 Acoustic singer-songwriters made folk popular (Dylan, Baez, Taylor, Mitchell)
 The Byrds electrified folk in early 1960s to invent FOLK-ROCK
 Rock and Folk-Rock provided soundtrack for the Sixties Generation, became more mainstream in the 1970s

Punk Rock : challenged commercialism of record industry
represented alienation and anarchy
Grunge : spirit of punk infused with more melody

RAP defies mainstream culture
 Like punk, developed in opposition to polished sound of commercial music industry
 combined black urban social politics, masculinity and comic lyrics
 incorporated black tradition of rhythmic spoken word

What is the line between
ARTISTIC
EXPRESSION
(performing) and
BUSINESS (recording and selling)?

 Recording industry generates more revenue than all other media except TV
 a GLOBAL OLIGOPOLY : A few corporations control most of industry worldwide

How does the global oligopoly affect the kinds of music you are able to buy and hear?

MAJOR RECORDING LABELS
 Five corporations produce 85% of all
American CDs/tapes, 80% of global market
 Warner
 Seagram (MCA/Universal/Polygram)
 Sony (CBS Records)
 EMI (Capitol/Virgin)
 BMG/RCA Records

What about independent labels?
“Indies” produce 16% of
America’s music
Can the smaller production houses survive in the global marketplace?