The Story of Music

Ancient World: With no way to record sound, music can only be enjoyed live. People go to concerts and sing at home to entertain their families.

1877: Thomas Edison makes the first machine that can record and play back music. It’s called the phonograph. The first sound he records? The nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

1887: Emile Berliner invents the gramophone. It uses sturdy discs to store sound. It is the first commercially successful device for listening to music.

1948: Columbia Records introduces the long-playing (LP) record disc, which can play about 45 minutes of music. The records are made of vinyl and played on a turntable connected to speakers.

1963: Cassette tapes come out. They play songs in one order. To find a song, you must fast-forward, stop, and listen until you find it

1979: For the first time, you can carry music in your pocket thanks to the Walkman, made by Sony. The Walkman plays cassette tapes.

1980s: By 1980, 99 percentof American households have a radio. Radio DJs play music over the airwaves, and people listen at home and in their cars.

1990s: Compact discs, or CDs, explode on the scene. Just be careful! If a CD gets scratched, the music skips.

1999: Napster lets people share their music for free over the internet. Napster is shut down 2 years later, when this file- sharing is ruled to be illegal.

2001: Apple unveils the iPod, a portable music player that plays digital sound files. It can store 1,000 songs—more than anything before it. Later, the iPhone replaces the iPod as a music player.

2008: Spotify, a streaming music service, launches in Sweden. By the end of 2021, it has 400 million users.

2032: Everyone will use virtual reality to dance to music with friends thousands of miles away.