The Journey of Music and Technology

As an IT professional and music lover, I have always followed the impact of technology on music creation, beats, mixes, and productions.

I have always carried out my professional life in the field of IT but in my free time, and even to this day, one of my passions is music.

In the ‘80's, I began almost by chance and as a hobby to get involved in the world of audio equipment, mixing, devices such as mixers, turntables, cassette decks, equalizers and speakers.

Since then, I’ve listened to sounds that at the time were difficult to create with any instrument. Producers and artists, such as Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, among others, used synthesizers to create those sounds, so called because they can imitate or synthesize a wide variety of sounds, such as the sound of another instrument, a voice, or generating new timbres, usually played through a keyboard.

The music was mixed in an analogous way, using two or more turntables and a mixer, which allows you to join two or more rhythms and go from one song to another as if it were the same. At that time it was an art because you had to know the songs by heart and at what minute it would be convenient to mix the other song to match the rhythms, using only your ear and headphones.

Over the years, this art has been changing with the use of computers, specialized equipment, such as controllers, and software to create this "magic." This is where technology has revolutionized this process.

Thanks to all these technological advances, new musical genres have emerged, some of them based solely on technology. Electronic as a musical genre is a success that has fascinated millions of people around the world and focuses on the creation of sounds and songs that would not be possible with traditional instruments and which have given prominence to DJs, some of whom are now considered great artists.

Many years ago, the only way to listen to music was to see it live but with the technology and invention of recording, we went from listening to it live to recording it on vinyl, cassettes, CDs and now in digital formats, such as MP3, ACC, FLAC and WAV, among many that exist.

Now, in a matter of minutes, we can select the platform of our convenience and with a single click find the song we want to listen to. This is possible thanks to the combination of information and communication: the internet, broadband, multimedia, mobile devices, P2P platforms that were pioneered by the now defunct Napster, and digital formats.

When I learned about Napster, I spent hours searching for songs and increasing my music collection. I remember that it was easy to search other users' collections and select the songs to download. At the time of its closure, many of us went to other platforms such as Ares, LimeWire or Kazaa, but it was not the same. That passion was only for sharing music without having the issue of marketing everything.

At the beginning of the 1980s, with the creation of the Compact Disc, we were able to enjoy the innovation of digital audio and in this way, artists and record companies were able to increase their profits from sales in this format. Later in the mid-’90s, technology and multimedia equipment allowed us to copy the songs in this format and move collections from vinyl to CD format. These characteristics indicated to us that technological progress in this sector was beginning and that after more than 100 years, great advances were taking place.

I digitized my vinyl with Final Vinyl and iMic audio interface, both from Griffin Technology, which consisted of a small piece of hardware connected through the USB port to the computer and from the other side to the audio output through RCA cables.

This innovation was one of the great advances of the last century because from that moment, users could listen to their songs from sound equipment and from their computer through the CD-ROM technology included in computers that later had the capacity to record, creating conflicts between the record industry and computer manufacturing companies.

This traditional model was threatened with the arrival of the "burners" at the end of the ‘90s, which allowed compact discs to be copied with the same quality as the originals and at a much lower cost. In some places, they sold equipment called "CD robots" with up to 10 bays that made copies of the original in record time. I had a single with two bays that I bought in downtown Mexico City and used to make my backups of the original CDs to listen to them in the car or at work.

As a replacement for the Walkman that used the cassette format, the Discman was also born from Sony, contributing to the illegal sales and copies of CDs and the replacement of cassettes as the most commercialized format in the world.

Later in this same decade, the company Diamond Multimedia invented a small device called the Rio PMP 300 that stored music in MP3 format and allowed 60 minutes of music to be stored on a flash card. This creation made the recording industry evolve, going from listening to a compact disc to listening to non-material files, which had been digitized.

In 2001, Apple invented its famous iPod  — and we already know everything that that revolutionized — creating an alliance between the technology sector and the record industry, since songs were sold in this format along with the equipment for their reproduction. During this decade, Apple released several models with higher capacity at very competitive prices, initially storing 1,000 songs and in 2009 more than 40,000 songs.

I had the first monochrome white iPod with 40 GB capacity, which back then was a real surprise. It had thousands of songs stored on it. Later, I had a 4 GB iPod Shuffle and later still, I bought a seventh generation iPod Classic in black and with 160 GB and capacity to save the image of the art of the songs and the lyrics. I still have all three.

In a few years the functionality of the iPod was added to mobile devices, allowing music to be introduced into mobile operating systems, but the record industry suffered from the illegal downloading in this digital reproduction format from the internet and also from copies between people through flash cards and Bluetooth devices.

In 2006, a new option for music reproduction and marketing was developed with the creation of Deezer, a French platform for streaming or music in the cloud that allowed users to access a catalog of thousands of songs through mobile devices or computers with a free plan or premium plan with a monthly fee. Here, the concept of subscription was born.

Followed by this service other similar portals were born. Spotify, created in Sweden and adding other functionalities, such as the creation of personalized lists that you could share on social networks and allowing you to search musical trends and consult the biographies of artists and bands.

Due to the development of APPS, or mobile applications, and companies like Deezer, Spotify and Apple Music, users began to play thousands of songs thanks to the bandwidth of mobile devices.

Today, we do not know what more surprises technology and its impact on music will bring. In recent years, we have seen a great advance in devices, in business models, in the way of making music, mixing it and in the creation of software. We have seen companies and brands disappear.

After almost two decades, music on vinyl is back for music lovers like me, and the purchase of used and new material is growing again. Mixing ix with vinyl is not the same as having the help of a controller or digital equipment but mixing with vinyl is still fabulous.It is art in the analog format, there is no SYNC, no Loops, no Beats, — everything is dependant on your hearing and your ability.

Really though, no digital format is the same as feeling vinyl in your hands, the art on the covers, in the inserts and listening to it on a good turntable. It's an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.

This is my music studio, I hope you like it.