The Evolution of Music Storage
Though many people are aware that the band new 120 Gigabyte iPod they hold in their hands, can hold vastly more music than any Cassette they dreamed of, mostly don’t truly grasp the concept of how far music storage has come.
The first music recordings were in the form of Phonograph cylinders, which were first introduced in the late 1800’s. These small wax cylinders could hold an astonishing 2 minutes of music on them. Later replaced with plastic, these recordings can withstand more replays than that of Vinyl records.
Eventually, the Gramophone records many grew up with broke through. These Vinyl pieces of plastic love could hold a good amount more than a Phonograph Cylinder, at 6 minutes (10″) up to 44 minutes (12″).
Then came the beloved 8-track, which could hold a few more moments of music at 46 minutes. The success of the 8-track laid primarily in the automobile industry, as it was a convenient way of listening to music while driving.
The 8-track met it’s maker, right around the time the Compact Cassette tape around. These new cassettes were not only smaller, but had that ability to hold a full hour of music. Many automobiles became equipped with cassette players, which also aided to the popularity of it, much like the 8-track before it.
The last form of physical media to really take hold was the CD (Compact Disc) format that many still use today. Regular CD’s could hold about 80 minutes of music. The audio quality was much higher than that of the cassette tapes, and it had the benefit of being more portable as well. Once again, the automobile industry was a driving force in it’s popularity.
Then came the advent of digital music. Digital music can vary in quality, being lower than the original Phonograph cylinders, and higher than compact disc. Benefits of digital come with the amount of storage one can have on their assorted Mp3 Players. The Apple iPod Classic, 120 Gig, can hold 280 hours of music. That’s 16,800 minutes of music, compared to the 80 of compact disc. To further put that in perspective, that would be 28,080 10″ records, 3663 8-track tapes, 2808 cassette tapes, or 2106 compact CD’s, all on a single iPod.
And that’s just for portable music, your home computer, a central media station to many, can contain hard drives containing up to 2 Terabytes of space. To put that in perspective, that would be 17 iPod Classics.
It’s clear we’ve come a long way in the advent of music storage, and it looks as though digital media is here to stay. Streaming media seems to be another popular choice for the next “candidate” of music streaming, but only time will tell if it proves to be a viable option for many people.
