Portable Music
It is amazing to think that each one of us, if you are into music, carry a device that allows access to millions of songs at any given time. With a few quick touches and a small monthly investment, we can listen to almost any song ever recorded. With the introduction of smartphones, we have become a society of portable DJs, curating playlists to our liking, changing them quickly to fit our mood or situation. But it always was not easy or convenient. And has the portability of music affected us as a social group. Today we are going to talk about the history of portable music.
One of the earliest forms of portable music came in the form of the car radio. Although there were a few attempts in the early 20th century, car radios did not come into its own until the 1950s. The invention of the transistor made radios much smaller and cheaper to make. With this technology, a German company called Blaupunkt, introduced the first FM radio for cars in 1952. By the end of the 1950s when rock and roll was in full swing, any teenager with access to a car could get away and listen to the music they wanted to hear. Which was not their parents' music. Of course there were a few bumps along the way before music in cars became a full success. In 1956, Chrysler introduced the Highway Hi-Fi, an in-car record player that played through the car speakers. As you might guess, it did not last long.
With the invention of the transistor, one of the first portable devices for music listening was the transistor radio. Introduced in the mid 1950s, it did not require a car and was considerably cheaper, so parents did not mind buying it for their kids. Again, it presented an opportunity for teenagers to get away and listen to their music with their friends.
The car radio and the transistor radio allowed teenagers to have their freedom and hang out with other like-minded people creating and shaping the idea of the teenager as a distinct cultural and social identity. It also introduced a shift in the way society thought about black music. These radios would pick up independent radio stations, particularly at night when the signal was clearer, exposing black music to white audiences. Thus “race music” became more widely accepted by the younger generation of music listeners.
As the 1950s moved into the 1960s, the technology toward portable music did as well. Tape technology evolved into a smaller format with the development of 8 track and cassette tapes. Although the cassette was brought to the public's attention in 1963, the 8 track (or Stereo 8 Cartridge), released in 1965, became more popular. This was because the big car companies such Ford offered 8 track players for their 1966 models of the Mustang, Thunderbird and Lincoln automobiles. The big attraction with the 8 track was the continuous loop that played without flipping the tape. 8 track tapes were also cheap, so teenagers could afford to buy their favourite artists without breaking the bank. As the format became popular, more artists included 8 track tapes as a format to have their music recorded on to, making 8 track tapes a reasonable option to the radio.
Going into the 1970s, cassette tapes slowly began to take over as the premier format for portable listening. There were a few reasons for this. First, they were considerably smaller than their 8 track cassette counterparts. Second, and probably most importantly, you could actually record on cassettes, later maximized with the mixed tape and the rise of the hip hop culture and the DJ. The one of the single most important developments which propelled portable music into the mainstream consciousness forever was the invention of the Sony Walkman cassette player.
Introduced on July 1st, 1979, the Walkman changed how we listen to music both as a group and individually. As a group, the Walkman marked the decline of listening to music as a social construct. With the exception of the portable cassette player or “boom box”, we no longer listened to music as a group. Music became a private matter with the individual now controlling what was being listened to. As a result, the Walkman represented a new type of experience for the individual listener. It not only integrated music into everyday activities such as walking and exercise but the Walkman also began a personal relationship with portable technology that continues today.
Before we move on to the late 1980s and early 1990s, I would like to take a quick side trip to a short lived but endearing portable device-the boom box. Introduced in the early 1980s, the boom box was a large heavy block shaped radio, usually paired with a single or double cassette player and large bass heavy speakers. They were mainly used outdoors because of their sheer volume and were usually seen hoisted upon the shoulders of some teens as they walked down the street. The importance of the boom box should not be underestimated as it was one of the few portable devices that was used in a group setting. It brought like minded people together who shared cassettes and different styles of music. Usually played in an urban setting, the boombox was an essential tool that helped spread early hip hop music and seen in early music videos and used as a status symbol, particularly in underprivileged urban areas.
The 1990s brought two major game changers in terms of music. The first was the invention of the CD. The compact disk offered a cleaner recording that albums or cassettes could not compete with. CDs held more music, were cheaper to produce and were more durable than cassettes. For the average person who did not rely on the versatility of the cassette, (you could record and make your own mixed tape), this was the perfect mobile medium. By the 1990s CD sales were surpassing cassette sales. Sony also introduced the portable CD player called the Discman, the updated version of the Walkman. Aside from the fact that in order to have a variety of music, you had to carry a number of CDs with you, it was a great way to hear music on the go.
That changed with the second game changer and perhaps a true watershed moment for music, along with the Sony Walkman, was the invention of the MP3 digital format. Developed by Karlheinz Brandenburg and a team of German engineers, MP3s allowed the compression of data representing audio without losing sound quality. MP3s were a game changer because they were easy to transfer over a new thing called the Internet. In the early days of the Internet, hard drives were small and transferring data via modem was slow. MP3s made it easier to transfer music from one computer to another. It was buggy, slow, unreliable and time consuming but it allowed for file sharing in ways never thought possible. I realize that file sharing over computers is not portable but stay with me. The latter half of the 1990s saw a rise in file sharing and music piracy. This was, in part, due to the rising cost of CDs and the decision by major record labels to discontinue the CD single. People decided that getting their music illegally but free was better than paying 20.00 for a CD, especially if you only wanted a song or two. This is where the next game changer came in and it was a big one. The invention of Itunes and the IPod.
When the new century came about, people had decided that digital was the way to go. It was small, convenient and you did not have to carry around CDs. There were a few attempts at MP3 players, but the home run was with Apple. In 2003, Apple introduced the IPod, a small digital device that fit in your pocket and held 1,000 songs! It was unbelievable, and it quickly became the new hip thing to own. But Apple carried it one step further. The creation of ITunes that same year allowed people to load up their Ipods with legal purchases. Costing only 0.99 per song or 9.99 for the entire album, it made for an extremely affordable alternative to CDs, making the IPod the de facto portable player to have. Although there were not many artists on board with the idea of digital releases of their music at first, it was quickly realized by the major labels that this was the future. By the mid 2000s most major recording artists had digital versions of their music available on ITunes.
This is where we enter the current stage of portable music. Digital downloads and streaming. By the early 2000s cell phones were everywhere. People were still using the IPod as their main source of portable music, but now it meant carrying two devices if you wanted to listen to music on the go. The invention of the IPhone in 2007 changed that. A touch screen device that not only was a phone but also a music player that was backed by technology never seen before. People began to use their IPhones for everything now and the IPod was slowly relegated to the history dustbin, discontinued in 2022. In the mid 2000s, people were still primarily buying their digital music from ITunes and other online retailers such as Amazon. However successful, the idea of buying music online was relatively short lived, soon to be usurped by something called streaming.
The idea of streaming music is not new. In 2001, Rhapsody was released, offering the first subscription based platform. Its library was first limited to independent labels, but quickly reached deals with major record labels to expand its digital library. Spotify was introduced in 2008 and Apple Music in 2015. Steaming now accounts for about 34% of the way people listen to their music and smartphones and updated MP3 players are the devices they use for their portable listening.
So we began with radios and the social construct of the teenager as a group listening to music and have moved consistently toward the individual music player with little to no interaction with anyone. Portable music began as a way to connect with other people outside the home but has returned to the private listening that we sought to escape from in the 1950s. As I stated at the beginning, we have become our own DJ, choosing songs that we as individuals like, from a list of millions of songs. There are no groups of like-minded people to share music. With streaming, there is almost too much music to come together on. More than ever, music has become a social bubble, with each of us listening to our own playlists and algorithms. Portable music is now convenient and easier than ever, but I do miss the listening parties.
Sources for this article include:
Alan Cross, A Journal of Musical Things
https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/a-brief-history-of-the-car-radio-1904-present/
The Boomin’ Systems: The Evolution of Car Audio
https://daily.jstor.org/the-boomin-systems-the-evolution-of-car-audio/
When The 8 Track Tape Came Out: Unveiling the Release Date, Origins, and Fascinating History
Paul Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History, (Colorado: Westview Press, 2006)
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