Chapter 12: Music Recording, Sharing, and the Information Economy

The arrival of Edison’s phonograph and Berliner’s gramophone changed the way music was accessed and consumed, making it a middle-class necessity rather than a luxury. This technological revolution permitted mass manufacture of sound recordings, promoting the growth of the music industry and shifting the landscape away from sheet music and opera singers and toward a developing market for recorded sound. This change was accelerated by the establishment of Tin Pan Alley in New York, where composers and publishers worked together to create and market music that reflected changing consumer tastes.

The development and adoption of radio and LP records allowed for much wider distribution of music, which challenged the formats that had become entrenched. The dominance of jazz and blues gave way to rock and roll, with artists like Elvis Presley popularizing music that was written by Black musicians. More recently, globalization and the power of the internet has afforded the rise of international music trends such as K-pop. The shift away from physical media toward the digital has democratized access to music but also raises new ethical concerns about fair compensation for artists and data privacy for consumers.