Audio Format Interaction
In the past century, many different audio formats impacted the way Americans listen, experience, and share their music. From vinyls to MP3s, music has been a large part of our culture in society. However, it has adapted and evolved much like everything does in America, and audio formats have greatly changed from time of analog. Most of this change results from advances in technology. Once the digital age took over, music distribution and technology followed rightly along. In other words, the way people respond and interact with audio formats changed as the formats changed over time.
Vinyl Records
Vinyl records had their own culture in a way, and it centered around the home and the family. Record players were placed in family rooms or living rooms so that music could be heard by everyone in the house. It was a family, entertainment activity which served a similar purpose as the television. Music brought people together and simultaneously gave them joy. A vinyl record has quit a bit of physical substance, and it requires care. Much of the time vinyl enthusiasts are those who feel a connection or nostalgia with the world prior to massive digital technology takeover. Yochim and Biddinger describe "vinyl subculture as 'made up of those who, for various reasons, resist technology or progress and determinedly cling to the artifact, collecting or preserving a part of it because of the meaning and experience contained within'" (184). Therefore, the reasons why people keep and continue to collect vinyl records is to recreate an atmosphere to past memories or to resist a technological world.
Walkmans
As the 1980s progressed, many cities started enforcing noise ordinances (Kelley). After that, the Walkman, a portable cassette player, became more popular due to it being lighter and less expensive (Kelley). The public show of sound playing from city street corners diminished and died away: "Gradually, people stopped listening to music together...headphones are universally accepted, and eye contact is frowned upon" (Kelley). Not only did the boomboxes disappear, music listeners began to isolate themselves from social interaction via headphones. Walkmans were used through cassette tapes into CDs, merely changing in design to accomodate and play CD-ROMS. Regardless, the only music a person could listen to on Walkmans were the cassettes and CDs he or she lugged around with them.
|
The Boombox
Cassettes changed the culture around music, because it was really the first time when music became mobile. Though Walkmans were used by quite a few people, the boombox (otherwise known as a radio or a stereo) is the image for the cassette tape era. Frannie Kelley from National Public Radio says, "Back in the day, you could take your music with you and play it loud, even if people didn't want to hear it. 150 decibels of power-packed bass blasted out on street corners from New York City to Topeka. Starting in the mid-'70s, boomboxes were available everywhere, and they weren't too expensive. Young inner-city kids lugged them around, and kids in the suburbs kept them in their cars." People used boombox to play their music loudly and proudly, and it definitely made a statement. In many ways, boomboxes and their owners were a small sort of counter culture preaching and protesting through sound waves and plenty of bass.
MP3 Players and iPods
MP3 players redesigned how people experience music, because for the first time, almost all the music a person could want could be stored on a singular device. Levy Steven from Newsweek says that "because it holds so much of one's music and can play back the songs with near-infinite variety, its addictive far exceeds that of the Walkman. Because it is more compact, it goes more places, with more ease." Due to these characteristics, MP3 players became more popular than ever; it seemed like almost everyone had one of these devices. Such a small device has had and continues to greatly affect how people interact with audio formats and music itself.
If Walkmans started the isolation of music listeners from one another, MP3 players took it to a whole new level. Steven makes a powerful statement of the the birth of not only MP3 players, but the most successful and popular device of all: "The iPod is only the most recent...advance in a movement of portable cocooning that's been underway for decades. In 1974, sociologist Raymond Williams use the term "mobile privatization" to describe the phenomenon of people forming technological bubbles around themselves...Sony's Walkman, was an exercise in two things: escape (shutting out the world) and enhancement (...reshaping your perception of the crappy world around you)." Now, in their own bubbles, people play the soundtrack to their days and lives as they walk to class, work, exercise, sit at home, and do almost anything else as well. They are private worlds with a new playlist every day due to the infinite possibilities of combination a MP3 player provides. |