Some History of Digital Audio and My Thoughts

Digital Audio had its early beginnings in the 1960’s but it became prevalent in the 1970’s, where digital recording was pioneered by the Japanese, namely by NHK and Nippon Columbia Corporations. The very first digital recordings were released in 1971. Essentially digital audio is technology that can be used for sound recording and reproduction. In a digital audio system sound is recorded through a transducer ( a microphone for instance) and that sound is sent to a algorithmic electrical system which then uses an analog to digital converter ( ADC) which uses pulse code modulation to convert the analog signal into a digital signal. Digital audio recorders also enable the use of compression, storage, processing and transmission of the digital audio file. The key advantages to digital recording is its simplicity and affordability . It allows us to compress large audio files into smaller file types, with very little distortion. It is also widely appreciated for its ability to allow more storage space, less noise distortion, its economy, and the ability to reach the consumers market place with far less cost and at far greater speed. Modern online music is now almost exclusively sold to the consumer this way and simply downloaded. It is the dominant way all music is consumed and purchased today.

The companies that make use of this technology are now household names such as Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud and Tidal to name a few. There are few industry’s more intriguing and closely monitored for the benefits to artists commerce than streamers . The average payout for a stream is just .003 cents per record, per stream. So artists are faced with increasing demands to reach large amounts of consumers, new audiences, and reach to earn a living. But it benefits the independent artists as well, who can simply self publish and record, leaving out the record label and waiting for a “deal’ to become an artists and make their music heard. In the last decade the streaming music service industry has exploded, with streaming music making a huge profit that accounts for nearly all of the record industries profits, namely from music licensing and sales. 

In the United States the first widely used commercial MP3 file was a recording of “Tom’s Diner” by Susan Vega. The MP3 of this song was developed in a joint venture with Sony Corporation and Phillips. These gigantic corporations leading in music and consumer electronics worked together collectively to create the first MP3 technology. In the early 90’s the MP3 was born. The story of the development of this technology can be attributed to and audio engineer named Karl-Heinz Brandenburg Working at the Fraunhofer Society in Germany in the 90's, audio engineer KarlHeinz Brandenburg was hard at work developing the MP3 audio compression scheme. Brandenburg used Vega's acappella version of "Tom's Diner" to tune the compression system, playing the track before and after compression was applied to tell whether MP3 sounded good enough. He figured Vega's song would be a tough track to compress as it was already favored by audiophiles and had a unique vocal that captured the essence of pure musical tone. And by using this song it would be a good test for whether MP3 was really listenable. Brandenburg seems to have done pretty well for himself -- MP3 became an incredibly popular technology and the future of digital audio was born. The record industry was changed by this new invention scrambling to the marketplace to put their songs and albums out in an MP3 format, and new companies quickly came on board, such as Apple Music to take advantage of this new market. I was around to witness this transformation and it made one thing fairly simple to me and other savvy music marketing professionals at the time- the single would now dominate the marketplace. No longer would consumers be inclined to buy a full album, they would simply download their favorite singles. In addition to this a very important issue of music piracy was born, and it is a huge issue today- even more so. I am always going to side with the copyright holder, as I believe that in fairness, artists, labels and publishers should be paid for their work and compensated. Having your work copywritten is a protection you will always need. I have never owned a bootleg record, and never ever will. Because as a music professional I too see the need to fairly and equitably be paid for one’s work , labor and art. I will always love the music business.