Page 25 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

Can we understand today’s music without the model changes of the 20th century?The rst compact disc was created in June1980. The optical system was developed by Philips, while Sony was responsible for the read mechanism and digital encoding. The creatorsof CDs, Philips and Sony, aimed to store 60 minutes of audio in an 11.5 cm-diameter disc. But Sony’s chairman, Norio Ohga, wanted to extend the capacity to 74 minutes so that the whole of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony would t on a single disc. Its size thus grew to the current 12.7 cm.This format ensured that quality of sound was not lost over time. It also provided higher audio quality than vinyl. The rst compact discs to be recorded were Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony and Fr d ric Chopin’s waltzes. The rst com- mercially released CD album, however, was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street.Sony launched its rst CD player on 1 October 1982. It was christened CDP-101 as a tribute to the binary system it ran on and sold for 168,000 yens, equivalent to 1,022 euros at current exchange rates.Three years later, Dire Straits became the rst group to sell a million copies of an album in CD format, Brothers in Arms. After four years on the market, CDs became the most widely sold sound system.Nowadays 75% of consumers access music online. The most revolutionary invention for consuming audio started out in 1988, when the Moving Picture Experts Group was established and a standard for digital audio and video was developed. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany encoded the MP3 format for the rst time. Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega was the rst track to be compressed into this format. MP3 became the standard for high-quality audio owing to the pos- sibility of adjusting the degree of compression; itcould occupy 12 or even 15 times less space than the original uncompressed le.The lawsuits brought against companies like Napster, which used les of this kind, stemmed from the ease with which les could be shared. Napster was an internet service for the distribu- tion of music les in MP3 format. It was the rst major P2P exchange network and was created by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning. Halfway through 2000, the company’s shareholders and representatives of Universal and Sony held a meeting to negotiate. The record companies demanded 90% of the pro ts, but no agreement was reached.Nowadays 75% of consumers access music online. The most revolutionary invention for consuming audio started out in 1988, when the Moving Picture Experts Group was established and a standard for digital audio and video was developed.Platforms for exchanging les online such as eDonkey, Ares and Kazaa thus emerged, sparking a heated debate about copyright and its boundaries.The giant Apple dominated the digital market with iTunes and its rst iPod, which came on sale in 2001 with the slogan “1,000 tunes in your pocket”. By then P2P networks had multiplied and millions of people were accustomedto downloading music; and mobile phones capable of playing tunes and songs had likewise appeared.Changes in consumers’ habits, the sharp fall in the value of hard copies and unauthorised transactions in recorded music dealt a harsh blow to record companies.Investments in the music industry dropped sig- ni cantly in the twenty- rst century. Traditional companies continued to back best-selling artists, but up-and-coming artists were largely left out of the picture. As a result, the self-management phenomenon emerged in a big way.AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 201725Smart culture. Analysis of digital trends