Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 years of music, machines, and money by Mark Coleman, Da Capo Press, $25, ISBN 0306809842 Reviewed by Wendy Grossman
TO a much larger extent than some musicians are willing to admit, music and technology are symbiotic. This is especially true of recorded music, where today鈥檚 recording technology can make even a tone-deaf singer sound as though she has perfect pitch. In Playback, Mark Coleman surveys this volatile relationship.
Format wars are, of course, a continuing problem for consumers: the 45 rpm single battled the 33 鈪� rpm long-playing record; CDs battled vinyl; and MP3s are battling CDs. But format wars are also a continuing problem for the recording industry, which is riddled with failures as well as successes.
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Thomas Edison, for example, believed his original recording device would be used primarily for dictating office memos, as well as for recording family voices and books for the blind. Even when he realised that recorded music was the 鈥渒iller app鈥�, he pursued technically excellent sound quality rather than the popular artists who would sell the format for him.
Coleman, who has covered rock music for Rolling Stone, therefore puts file-sharing in its proper context: as one link in a long chain of industry crises.
If the past is a guide to the future, the industry will survive. But, as Coleman concludes, the magic has finally escaped from the can. Technology made the recording industry; and it may yet break it.