When Thomas Edison was experimenting with a new telegraph, he accidentally stumbled upon voice recording. At the end of experiment regarding this new contraption of voice recording, he was successfully able to record the "Mary Had a Little Lamb." The speaker was required to speak into the sound collecting horn while simultaneously turning the hand crank on the side. The speaker's voice would then be recorded in the tin foil cylinder.

Rather than using a cylinder, Emile Berliner modified the phonograph by using a disc instead. The discs were flat and could hold up to 2 minutes of recording.

As more discs and cylinders were giving more dynamic sounds. The piano became an exceptionally popular instrument during among the music industry. So music publishers went to court when the pianists wanted to re-record the recordings on their player piano scrolls. So the supreme court ruled that there had to be a law requiring a payment to mechanically reproduce a song.

Due a lack in excess money of Americans, leisure goods like music became luxury goods. During the time of the Great Depression, tape recording cartridges are invented. However, they fall behind because of the Great Depression.

There were three things that became popular after the great depression. These three things were tapes, LP records, and Rock and Roll. Magnetic tapes finally enabled the easy recording of long segments of music, and the LP allowed their playback. LP records extended their playing time by 7 or 8 minutes and could playback easier.

During the Great Depression, many music businesses declined. As a result, this opened a door for many African Americans to join in the Music Business. The white market had a space for black music. Famous rockers singing in this genre on music pleased many people, especially the youth.

Edwin Armstrong introduces the frequency-modulated (FM) radio which has less static and less transmitter power. This is was seen impossible and threatened the Radio Corporation of America's hold on AM radio. So when Armstrong introduced his idea, the Federal Communications Commission cut the FM radio stations as well as crippling the emerging FM market.

Philip and Sony announced during the 1980s that they would create uniform standard worldwide. The CD was created along with the CD player worldwide so that the CD could be played on all CD players. This ended the vinyls and records because the CD was more universal and convenient for playing and recording music.

After the internet became prominent during this time period, the music industry began to dramatically change. Music could now be put on a network that was available to anyone regardless of location. This network became the internet.
Digital Audio tapes were introduced as a result of this new technology. The digital audio tapes were resisted by music publishers because of piracy fears. The Digital Audio Tapes (DAT) offered superior quality and near-perfect duplication meaning that pirating audio from the CDs could be easy and undetectable.

The MP3 Player was a combination of the internet as well as the digital audio tapes. They were easy to compress and could easily be sent as a file to other computers because of their small file size.

With higher technology available and portable music players, music could now be successfully bought online. With internet being a universal service, anyone from anywhere has the ability to listen and buy music at an affordable rate with online music shops like iTunes.

Music Streaming companies like Spotify and Pandora now stream music when a person subscribes or uses the free services provided. The music is preloaded on a network or application and then played. This has begun to threaten music artists. This is because listeners of the music streamers are buying less albums and are instead listening to the songs played by the music streamers which don't have to be payed for. The Music industry is now almost completely becoming digital.

The industry of music has always been shifted and changed because of the people. People rely on music while the music changes with the people. For one, must has been there to alleviate stress from people. During the great depression for example, many people who had lost their jobs and hope listened to the music and entertainment on radio as a method of distraction. And during the time of the civil rights movements, music changed as a result of those movement. Many famous protest songs arose including Bob Dylan's "The times are-a changing" and Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit". These songs were being produced to give motivation to the many people taking part in the Civil Rights movements.
The different advances in technology through time impacted how people received music. First through the phonograph, vinyls, and eventually electronically.

Music is part of the creative community. In the US alone, the industry makes approximately $125 billion a year.