| Vinyl
Years | 1940's | 1950's | 1960's | 1970's | 1980's | 1990's |
A
history of the music industry : 1980's
 |
| MTV
Launches with 'The Buggles' |
|
On August 1st, 1981 a new era of music launched with MTV
playing their first ever music video (ironically titled
but the very true,
'Video Killed The Radio Star' by the Buggles). This simple act changed the face of popular music for ever.
The pressures on artists were now not only to have a great sounding song,
and to look good for the cameras, now they had to produce great videos too,
and smile happily all the way though as they were doing it. The best at this
new found medium got even very average songs to the top of the charts by producing
really good videos (some might argue that this still happens a lot today).
Bands that really made the most of video were acts like Duran Duran, Michael
Jackson with his multi-million dollar epics (Thriller was over 14 minutes long!),
and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, making the use of video more controversial and
immediately increasing record sales.
 |
| The
Compact Disc |
|
The next great revolution in music
technology was billed as the wonderfully indestructible
compact disc format. Originally introduced in 1982 by
Philips and Sony, the new format offered crystal clear
sound quality, while (according the the presenters on
"Tomorrows World") being virtually unscratchable.
Who
can forget those demonstrations of CD's being covered
in jam, wiped off and then played like they were brand
new? Um, I might just send a couple of my CD's to Tomorrows
World and ask for my money back!
The introduction of the new media was slow to take off
at first. By now many people had huge collections of
vinyl recordings and were reluctant to change. In addition
to this the audiophiles claimed that the crystal clear
sound lost "the soul" of the original recordings.
These
factors combined with an inevitable price rise of the
new discs meant that it wasn't until 1988 that the CD
became the dominant media for recorded music.
So, with music videos, portable music, cd's and MTV all
happening during the 80's it was another big decade of
development for the music industry.
<< Back
to the 1970's | On to the
1990's >>
| Timeline
of Events |
1980 |
Sony introduced first
consumer video camcorder. |
1981 |
3M was no longer a market force, leading
audiophile engineers declare war against
digital as acquisition system. |
| The MIDI system is standardised as the
universal synthesizer interface. |
1982 |
Philips and Sony introduce compact disc
in late 1982 to the buying public and the
American dominance of formats is ended,
that same year, Sony acquires MCI. |
| Sony releases the first CD player, the
Model CDP-101. |
1983 |
BT's Fibre-optic cable is used for long-distance
digital audio transmission in linking New
York and Washington. |
| Sony introduced the Beta HiFi VCR with
high-quality FM sound. |
1984 |
The Apple Corporation market the Macintosh
computer and in that same year sales of
the recorded compact cassettes (audio cassettes)
exceeded LP record sales for the first
time. |
1985 |
Sony introduced the 8-mm format in April;
the VHS group, led by JVC, brought out
a compact version of VHS, known as VHS-C,
but it only recorded for 20 minutes. |
1986 |
R-DAT recorders are introduced in Japan
and Dr. Gunther Theile gave a prescribe
description of a novel stereo "sphere
microphone.". |
1987 |
LEF Digidesign markets "Sound Tools," a
Macintosh-based digital workstation using
DAT as its source and storage medium. |
1988 |
CD becomes dominant medium. |
| Super-VHS video format equalled 8-mm
in picture quality but not in sound quality. |
1989 |
Sony introduced the Hi8 video format
and the Sony CCD-V99 camcorder. |
| Dolby S brings new generation of inexpensive
24 tracks to home use. |
Music
Development during the 1980's |
|
