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There's little doubt that the internet has changed the way some people consume
music.
For most of today's young music fans, illegal
file-sharing sites like Kazaa have replaced the local record store as
the primary supplier of the latest hits.
But how did we come so far? How did it all start?
Music has been part of the human culture since the early days of civilization. Since almost the beginning of time, music has been a component of leisure time, festivities, or sacral/religious rituals. In 17th -18th century Europe, opera, ballet, concerts and dance parties became a form of entertainment, initially of the rich public, but also increasingly of middle-classes. Today music in many counties is part of the culture and has probably become the dominant force of entertainment in all levels of society.
The evolution of music has changed with the consumer's preference on how they listen to music, and corresponding available technology of the time. In the beginning recorded music had no "standard", but patents existed and the music was delivered for specific listening devices, of which there were many types. The history of consumer devices suggests that when a device reaches a certain consumer critical mass, it is difficult to replace unless the value proposition to consumers is overly compelling and/or industry forces conspire to get rid of an old standard or technology. For example, the 8-track tape, was supplanted by the much more reliable, effective, and economical cassette. Vinyl records were strong-armed out of the market by the record companies, who simply cut off the supply. Despite size and quality advantages of CDs, vinyl's price and familiarity kept it the preferred choice of some consumers. Today, with the explosion of the Internet and digital compression schemes, digital music can now be downloaded directly from a number of Web sites on the Internet. One such popular compression scheme is MP3. Whether MP3 has reached consumer critical mass is debatable, but its rapid adoption rate, shows a continuous consumer acceptance in downloading music as oppose to traditional purchase of CDs.
This section is dedicated to the history of popular music. What are the milestones
we passed to come to the era of today.
There are several chapters where you can browse through to enlarge your knowledge
of the basics of today's music.
Enjoy your ride.
Timeline of music related historical dates
Musical genres
Cities that have been the origin of a genre
of music
Cultural and regional genres of music
History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph
Alternative rock
Bigband
Blues
Breakdancing
Calypso
Classical music
Country
Disco
Electronic Music
Funk
Golden oldie versus Evergreen
Gospel
Gramophone
Hiphop
House
Jazz
Macarena
MP3/Downloads
New age
New wave
Progressive rock
Punk
Reggae
Reggaeton
Rhythm and blues
Round dance
Salsa
Soul
Techno
These pages were created by www.LyricsVault.net
