1991-2000
1991
Sony and Philips produce the standard for the Recordable CD-ROM (CD-R).
CDR gave the power to a person to write their own CD's. Using a process which heats a blank disc and softens the shell enough for the laser to penetrate, it is possible to record CD's in something the size of a traditional CD-ROM drive. Coupled with the up-and-coming technology called mp3 compression, the tables turned in the music industry.
1992
Sony began sales of the MiniDisc.
This disc was half the size of traditionaly CD's and had the same amount of play time. The big consumer payoff is that MiniDiscs are rewriteable. The MiniDisc was intended to replace the CD and the compact cassette. According to The Rewritable MiniDisc System, "Sales of cassette tapes had been decreasing since 1989, and Sony felt that the compact cassette system was approaching the end of its format life."
IBM and Toshiba In July formed an alliance to develop flash memory cards.
Flash cards are used in many storage areas. A portable mp3 player can use them to store extra music, a digital camera to store more photos, they are very versitile.
And now for my audio recording pick of the century...
MP3's
MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 . It is a way to compress sound files so they can be transfered over the internet. Below are some landmarks in MP3 history...
1997 - MP3.com was founded in November by Michael Robertson with 3,000 songs available for free download. In the next 12 months, it became the #1 music site on the Internet with 3 million hits monthly.
1998 - the first MP3 Summit was held July 2 at the UCSD Price Center in San Diego, attended by digital music leaders Scott Jamar of a2bmusic, Xing CEO Hassan Miah, music lawyer Robert Kohn, Gene Hoffman founder of Goodnoise, the first Internet music label, Geffen Records producer Jim Griffen, and Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, the founder of MP3 compression.
1999- Napster.com was founded. This site gives users free software that connnects them directly to other user's computers so they can download MP3's. When it began to grow popular, record companies sued the maker of the software. Is this a clear-cut case of people using legal software or of the record companies trying to enfringe on freedom of speech? You decide...and post your results in my guestbook.
Click Here to download a 30 second sample of a MP3 song. You will need MacAmp or WinAmp to listen to it.
I chose MP3 format to be the best media for audio recording because anyone with a computer can get an MP3 song. Imagine how many bands can just post their songs on the 'Net and get fans...let me get off my soapbox now.
That's the end of sound recording history for this millenia...I hoped it wasn't as boring as making this page!