2. Cultural Impacts of Recording Sound

To get a historical view, and a better grip on the social impacts related to the topic of my tutorial, we will look at the cultural impacts of recording sound. In the beginning of the history of recorded music when Edison invented his phonograph, the very concept that the human voice could be recorded was astonishing to people of that time period, end even Edison himself. The phonograph did not sell well at first because it was being marketed for office dictation. It wasn’t until they changed the marketing angle did the phonographs begin to really generate any money. Edison began to market his invention more like a jukebox; It was a coin-operated device located in saloons that would play a song for a nickel. Each of

"Victrola Phonograph Ad," © Victrola 1916

these machines would actually bring in revenue of around $1,000 a month. The concept of coin-operated machines was taken even further with the creation of like phonograph arcades where people could come and pay a little money to listen to different songs on many different phonographs. Controversy began to rise around this time about how recorded music was sort of a blasphemy, as it did not sound the same as live recording, as it would boast in its advertisements. Even John Phillips Sousa, who was a famous composer of band music, displayed anti-recorded music sentiment. The biggest argument seemed to be that by recording music and listening to it in this way was changing how people experienced music as a whole. It used to be that in order to really experience music, people had to attend live performances. Truth be told, I personally think that it is true to think that you can’t get the same experience from recording that you can from listening to a live performance. Opponents found it particularly frustrating when they would advertise that the recordings sounded the same as the live recordings. The reverse side of this argument was that having recorded music could lead to the potential uplifting of society as a whole, as it made the possibility of listening to music at all a reality for a much wider group of people. (Norton).

There was tension that had to do with race that came with recorded music. During the early 20th century, there was already tension that existed because of race. In terms of music, white musicians were creating serious recordings of jazz music, a style of music that was born out of African American culture. At the same time, the only music that was being recorded at the time of African American musicians was meant to be comedy, and was in fact quite derogatory to their race. Coincidentally, jazz was what later helped to bridge this gap between races; both black and white performers began playing together in this genre (Norton).

A more recent social controversy surrounding the music industry is the morality issues surrounding music piracy. This is not by any means

"Music Piracy" © Oliver Weiss n.d.

an old notion, but for the purposes of focus I wish to hone in on more recent battles with music piracy. The term “music piracy” is in reference to  the illegal copying and distribution of music, whether this be through burning CDS of music you do no have the original recording of, or perhaps downloading music illegally from a website (RIAA).  It is not illegal, as I mentioned, to copy music if you own an original copy of the music, like the vinyl record that will be used for this teaching project. It would only be illegal if you say, gave a copy of your record to someone who did not own their own original copy of the duplicated music.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA, in 2005 3,640,122 counterfeit / pirated CD’s were seized in America, and 3,299 were arrested on music counterfeiting charges (RIAA, 2005). More recent methods of recording or storing music, like MP3 files, and burnable CD’s has a lot to do with music piracy. When people realized just how easy this technology made it copy and distribute music it was kind of like an unstoppable force.

In 1999 an 18 year old kid created Napster, which was a sort of server where users could log on, and thusly swap and share music files. The thing about it was all the swapping and sharing was done without any kind of money exchange, and with no sort of compensation to the artists. People were essentially given the ability to download music for free, and this really peeved the music industry. In response to this the RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster for facilitating copyright infringement of the music (The Napster Controversy). More recently Napster has changed its evil ways, and users must pay for the music they download, in the fashion of other music file sites like ITunes, and Rhapsody (Napster, 2009).

As far as gender issues go, I found it interesting that the leaders of most of the concepts I was discussing before were made up mostly of a male cast of characters. I suppose the gender issue I would bring up for this project, is that the majority of the creation of these musical items were created by men, and women seem to be absent. Even people that were opposed to programs such as Napster for example, tended to be male voices. I guess what I am trying to say here, is women should be more involved in these issues, as there are certainly female musicians in this world, such as myself, and our voices need to be heard. Even the main musical groups that were fighting groups like Napster were usually male groups. The music industry is incredibly male dominated. While researching the topic of “gender in the music industry” I was not shocked to see that although women are clearly involved in music, there is a very sexual stereotype that surrounds her image. It seems like its the only way they can sell their records. I found a great image (pictured to the left) to go along with my project because it shows Janis Joplin in her prime beside an image of what was described as a “current fashion icon” , apparently mimicking Janis’ style, but in a much more scantily clad way. Granted, Janis has a bit of low cut shirt on, but since when does tiny little nothing shorts have anything to do with the capturing the spirit of a blues icon?!?! I feel like by doing this, female musicians are denying themselves the chance to be taken seriously, and instead are just being turned into a wanted sex object. I look more to musicians like Ani DiFranco who started her own music label called “Righteous Babe Records” that allows her to steer clear of hollywood trying to muddy up her image. Ani is a great example of empowering female music, as she tends to write about relevant female issues and, dare I say it, feminism! I have included a picture of her next to Joan Jett, another great female musician, just to get the image of the super thin tiny shorts girl out of my mind… You can continue on this proverbial journey by reading next some of my personal thoughts about these issues.

"Joan and Ani" © Righteous Babe Records 2004