#5 EOTO

 Thomas Edison created many inventions, but one of my favorites has forever changed my life and my love of music. In 1877, While working on improvements to the telegraph and the telephone, Edison combined these two technologies and discovered a way to record sound with tin foil-coated cylinders. The machine had two needles: one for recording and one for playback. Edison built a mouthpiece which he would speak into. Where the sound would be recorded and then played back to you. This created a sound vibration of his voice indented the foil on the cylinder with the recording needle. Edison was not a singer but he recorded the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little Lamb” much to his surprise he heard his voice for the first time in a recording. 

Edison had big plans to make new and improved conditions for his Phonograph. Therefore by 1878, Edison established the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company to sell the new machine. However music was the first thing that this technology was used for by the general public. This machine was used for dictation in business, recording family voices, recording telephone calls, books for the blinds and then developed into music boxes. But it was the hottest invention around. The first phonograph’s market price was only $20 which doesn’t seem like a lot now but back then the value of the dollar has gone down throughout the years. 

 In 1917, when the U.S. became involved in World War I, the Army commissioned the Edison Company to create a special model of the phonograph for their troops going overseas. Their goal was to cheer up the soldiers because they were so far from home. Edison was so patriotic that he even recorded and praised the soldiers for their enormous sacrifice and contribution for the United States of America. Edison was a huge supporter of his invention of This basic machine that could play a few songs of the time. As time went on his creation constantly kept changing through better technology and more funding once popular. 

After the war, the phonograph brought the music into peoples homes where they could  listen to whatever music of their choice. It is said that after World War I was the dawn of the first development of what is known as jazz today. The combined instrumental music and recorded it for the first time. This music was developed in St. Louis and New Orleans and was called “Ragtime”.  People began listening to recorded music with lyrics during this time period analyze lyrics in depth.

The phonograph was one piece of technology that continued to evolve into many different platforms and purposes. The movies were no longer silent films but films with music and eventually people talking in the film. The long term effects of the phonograph are expansion of the  movie industry, development of  television and the evolution of sound in music, books, documentaries. Where there is sound recording was produced. 

Sound and music keeps people connected and inventors continued to work though technology where the recorded sound became more pure than the live music event.  The recording has enhanced over time from the cylinder, vinyl albums, 8-track, cassette tapes, CD’s, flash memory, to the live stream through services such as Pandora, Apple, Spotify.

However, there were people that thought recording music could hurt the creative process in the industry. Ninety-nine years ago, John Philip Sousa predicted that “recordings would lead to the demise of music. The phonograph, he warned, would erode the finer instincts of the ear, end amateur playing and singing, and put professional musicians out of work.” 

We have seen many law suits in early streamlining releases that didn’t favor the talent. The rights holders of the recordings, which include record labels, producers, and performers, split about 55 to 60% of the fee. Meanwhile, the rights holders of the song itself (the composition) — which at once includes composers, arrangers, music publishing companies and lyricists — see about 10 to 15% of that pie. As David Turner, a critic who writes the weekly streaming newsletter Penny Fractions and now works for SoundCloud, said in an interview with Slate last year: "So if you're signed to a major label, for every stream you get you're probably getting maybe 12 or 15% from that if you're an artist." 75% of the music industry revenues come from streamlining  and it is a billion dollar industry that reaches the masses world wide.