From phonograph to Spotify: the evolution of music players

Music has been a part of our daily lives for thousands of years and it is the act of being able to enjoy our favorite style of music at any time. It became possible more than a century ago, when the first music players began to appear.

However, many people may think of the following question: What were the first known music players? If this question has already crossed your mind, we will take a real time travel in the world of music in the following lines. To follow!

1. Phonograph

The ancestor of music players was created by Thomas Edison in 1877. The phonograph was a device that could record and reproduce sounds recorded on site in a completely mechanical way. However, it had very limited equipment. After all, it was only possible to use the equipment for three or four recordings before throwing it away.

Later, new materials were added to the composition of the cylindrical plate of the equipment, which slightly extended its service life.

2. gramophone

Eleven years after the introduction of the phonograph, society had the chance to see the birth of one of the musical players that revolutionized the market: the gramophone, invented by the German Emil Berliner.

The gramophone’s proposal was different from that seen in its “father”. Instead of using plates to record sounds, gramophone used a record to support songs, sound was reproduced when a needle touched the material recorded on that media.

3. Victrola

In the 20th century, or more specifically in the 1940s, the first major change we could see in the way we listen to music was with the introduction of the record player, which worked very similar to that of the gramophone.

The biggest difference of this device from the previous model is the disk reading speed, which can be 33 rotations per minute. Famous LPs that can store up to 60 minutes of music – or at 45 revolutions per minute, only one song was recorded on the media.

4. Walkman

It’s interesting to imagine that another major revolution in music players has taken this long. But that’s exactly what the Walkman allowed when the first models of this equipment created by Sony arrived in stores in 1979.

with Walkman, You can load your favorite songs onto cassettes and play them whenever you want, as long as the batteries last. Another difference was that it was the first device in this evolutionary line to allow for a personalized experience, as it only worked with headphones.

5. Disc Man

The disc man, also invented by Sony in 1984, was another major evolutionary leap for audio players. His proposal was very similar to that of the Walkman, only changing the music duplication support from cassette to CD.

Unlike the previous model, the Discman had one small problem: If you are doing any physical activity, such as running, Shaking the device may cause the CD to “skip” part of the songThis spoiled the experience a bit. However, here we were able to say goodbye to the problem of tape tangling; In fact, you, your father or your mother have probably already used a pencil to put the tape back in place.

6. Micro System

In the early 2000s, the microsystem came to stores, combining the best of both worlds, allowing you to enjoy your favorite songs using CDs or cassettes.

It was one of the music players that gained the most versions because it could only work with a plug or a battery, and it even had different models, some of which were made for home use and some that could be carried on the shoulder.

7. MP3 Player

The MP3 player represents a true evolution for music players. From then on, no form of media was needed to reproduce the songs. In this case, all you had to do was download your favorite tracks to your computer and then transfer them to the device via the USB port on your computer.

In this way, more music can be stored in the device. This is because the size of the songs in MB and the internal memory capacity of the MP3 are taken into account.

8.iPod

It is not possible to talk about the evolution of music players without remembering the iPod. It was created by Apple in 2001. Won the world by offering a compact format and is more functional than MP3.

Moreover, it had an absurd storage capacity for that period: 5 GB or 10 GB, up to a thousand songs could be stored on the device.

9.Spotify

Finally we come to the last great evolution of music players. You no longer need to buy a specific device to play music or even worry about storage capacity.

With Spotify, all the user needs is an account and a subscription to access thousands of songs stored on the platform. This technology guarantees a wider reachand even the opportunity to discover different artists and musical styles. Not to mention the creation and sharing of playlists, which have definitely become popular with the public.

So, do you recognize all or some of the music players presented here? What impressed you the most? Share your opinion with other readers TecMundo We use our social networks.