5: The 1980’s: New Media, New Music

In 1979, the music industry was forced to turn over a new leaf by the crash of the record business. A glut of disco records oversupplied the market, and when the fad ended, record companies lost money. This spelled the end of the LP, but other technologies were just beyond the horizon, waiting to change everything

Cassettes

The first great shift was the ascendancy of the cassette tape. Though larger 8-track tapes had been available since the late 60’s, they were bulkier than records and were noisy when changing between tracks (Harris and Tatum). In 1979, the smaller cassette tape made its mark with the release of the Sony Walkman. For the first time, music went from a public to a private leisure outlet, as headphones enabled the user to listen without broadcasting his choice, and to take music everywhere. Cassettes were easier to rewind, easier to handle, and easier to store than any other medium. They could also record: the record industry’s main worry about tapes was the potential for “piracy”. Yet cassettes caught on quickly: by 1983, cassette and record sales were neck and neck. By 1986, cassettes were outselling LP’s by 240 million (Coleman 150-159).

1981 ad for cassettes (Photo: Vintage Ad #1,060: Music me all over” by Jamie/CC BY 2.0)

CD’s

Following close on the heels of this explosion was another revolution in playback technology. The compact disc first made an appearance in 1982, and immediately made the LP seem behind the times. It could hold twice the sound (74 minutes to the LP’s 40), and since the music was programmed onto the disc rather than physically imprinted, the order of songs could be switched at will. With the right equipment, almost anyone could make a CD containing music which sounded smoother and didn’t deteriorate as those on other media did. By 1989, Americans were buying 96.8 million CD’s as opposed to 17.5 million LP’s. The end of the record had arrived (Coleman 164-169, Szatmary 305-307).

Photo: “vintage Ad #760” by Jamie/CC BY 2.0

I Want My MTV!

Yet it was more than novelty, or even the good qualities of the new technology, that was selling this music. The culmination of the 80’s music industry was the founding of its newest medium of exposure: MTV. Up until the 80’s, few companies or musical genres consistently combined video with music. “Real” rock stars were afraid of tarnishing their images by interacting with the stodgy values of network TV. Yet, once Warner Entertainment saw how profitable niche cable television was becoming, it couldn’t resist. Drawing from the small archive of music videos at its disposal, the company launched Music Television on August 21, 1981 at 12:01 AM. At first only offered to 2.1 million homes, it rose within two years to claim 17 million. Not only did MTV launch the careers of some of the decade’s most iconic stars (including Michael Jackson and the majority of British electro-pop artists), it also changed the landscape of music entirely. Every single now had to release a music video to be successful, as the music which consumers bought was almost directly linked to the songs on “heavy rotation” on MTV. Youth culture was back, and coming into the digital age (Szatmary 279-294; Banks 27-46).

Photo:”MTV Mag” by Fred Seibert/CC BY 2.0