| Vinyl
Years | 1940's | 1950's | 1960's | 1970's | 1980's | 1990's |
A
history of the music industry : 1990's
 |
| Online
Music Download Services |
|
As we entered the 90s the face of music had changed
dramatically, and now rather than one medium overtaking
all others, the new developments in technology seemingly
just added further choices for the music fan.
While the CD remained the dominant force is sales terms, people were still
buying vinyl records, the new MiniDisc format proved popular with some and
the steady adoption of the internet started to gain popularity with the more
technically literate as the decade wore on.
If anything, the nineties were
largely about delivering music to the fans however the fans wanted to receive
it, a trend that still continues to this day.
Of course the introduction of the recordable CD and the later introduction
of the MP3 format in the 90s raised the question of music piracy again in
the industry with each new development supposedly signally the death of the
music industry as we know it. And yet, as had happened with earlier inventions
like the cassette recorder, with each new technological development, sales
of new music seemed to continually increase.
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| Sony
Mini-Disc Player |
|
By 1994 the global "Big 6" music companies controlled
a $30 billion record industry: Philips (owns Polygram,
A&M, Mercury, Island ), Sony (owns CBS Records),
Matsushita (owns MCA, Geffen), Thorn-EMI (owns Capitol,
Virgin), Time Warner, and Bertelsmann (owns RCA Records).
Not bad for an industry reportedly being killed more
every day by the methods of piracy!
Even with the further developments in music delivery
brought about by improving speeds for the delivery of
music over the internet, the consolidation of the recording
industry continued unabated throughout the decade.
By 1999 the 5 largest record companies in the U.S.
controlled 84% of the 755 million albums sold in the
U.S. which is some business from the early days of our
vinyl music history. And so we come to the end of our
tour into the vinyl years here at WWWK.
We hope you enjoyed
this brief trip through a century of massive change in
our music listening and don't forget, to find out more
about this amazing time in music, just following the
links at the top right of this page for more great musical
nostalgia.
<< Back
to the 1980's
| Timeline
of Events |
1990 |
Dolby proposes a 5-channel
surround-sound scheme for home theatre
systems, and the write-once CD-R becomes
a commercial reality. |
| The BT invention of
ISDN telephone links are offered for high-end
studio use. |
1991 |
Wolfgang Ahnert presents, in a binaural
simulation, the first digitally enhanced
modeling of an acoustic space. |
1992 |
The Philips DCC and Sony's MiniDisc,
using digital audio data-reduction, are
offered to consumers as record/play hardware
and software. |
| Recordable CD's become commonplace. |
1993 |
In the first extensive use of "distance
recording" via ISDN, producer Phil
Ramone records the "Duets" album
with Frank Sinatra. |
| Digital HDTV Grand Alliance in October
selected Dolby AC-3 to provide digital
surround sound for the emerging technology
of digital television. |
1994 |
Global Big 6 control $30 billion record
industry: Philips (owns Polygram, A&M,
Mercury, Island), Sony (owns CBS Records),
Matsushita (owns MCA, Geffen), Thorn-EMI
(owns Capitol, Virgin), Time Warner, and
Bertelsmann (owns RCA Records). |
1995 |
By September, all companies in the DVD
consortium agreed to DVD standards. |
| The first "solid-state" audio
recorder, the Nagra ARES-C, is introduced.
It is a battery-operated field unit recording
on PCMCIA cards using MPEG-2 audio compression. |
1996 |
Iomega debuts high-capacity "Jazz" and "Zip" drives,
useful as removable storage media for hard-disk
recording. |
| DVD players started selling in Japan,
and began in 1997 selling in the U.S. |
1997 |
DVD videodiscs and players are introduced.
An audio version with 6 channel surround
sound is expected to eventually supplant
the CD as the chosen playback medium in
the home. |
| San Diego's MP3.com was founded in November
by Michael Robertson. |
1998 |
MP-3 players for downloading MP-3 Audio
music from the Internet appeared. |
| The Winter Olympics open with a performance
of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," played
and sung by synchronizing live audio feeds
from five continents with an orchestra
and conductor at the Olympic stadium in
Nagano, Japan, using satellite and the
BT ISDN technology. |
1999 |
The 5 largest record companies in the
U.S. controlled 84% of the 755 million
albums sold in the U.S. in 1999: 26.3%
by Seagram's Universal (owns MCA, Polygram),
16.2% by Sony Music (owns Columbia), 16%
by Bertelsmann's BMG (owns RCA Victor),
15.7% by Time Warner's Warner Music, 9.4%
by EMI. |
Music
Development during the 1990's |
|
