GAURAV SHAH
5 revolutionary tech advancements that changed how Humans listen to MUSIC !
With every passing day we hear new technological inventions that make our life easier than what it already is ! May it be creating a brilliant piece of artwork or exploring other parts of our universe and viewing those exploratory evidences in the palm of your hands on your smartphone ! Today everything is about being small and one of the most important parts of our everyday life is the way we listen to our music . Ever wondered what the predecessors of earphones / headphones looked like ? This listicle covers the milestones through the years towards music streaming apps today !
BoomBox – Late 1960s and early 1970s
The BoomBox was an absolute work of brilliance in the 1970s with the western countries ’ streets being filled with people listening to hip hop while on the move . It was like one big party everywhere you would go . Only able to play music via recorded Cassettes and radio stations , the Boombox back then had a very limited choice for music but that ’ s exactly what the of the our was considering the rise in the Hip hop culture . It was also nicknamed as ‘ Ghetto Blaster ’ right before it started turning into a nuisance on the streets and becoming lesser and lesser acceptable , choking to its death . Until recently when it rose from ashes with a host of capabilities to play music from like USB , AUX , Bluetooth connections via your smart phone . Unlike its ancestral BoomBox the new gen BoomBox today is much lighter , smaller and louder !
Walkman / Discman – Late 1980s to late 1990s
Walkman refers to a portable pocket sized cassette player connected to earphones / headphones using Alkaline batteries to play music was another game changer to how people listened to music in the late ‘ 90s along with Discman which had the same purpose but music was played via recorded CDs only . The kids of mid to late 80s will definitely be familiar with this and have a lot of memories attached with it too . This technological advancement took the musical journey through an irreversible turn changing how people would listen to music for decades to come ! The idea of using a headphone / earphone , keeping the size of the music player handy , using rechargeable AAA sized batteries and most of all creating zero nuisance made this a one of its kind revolution ! The core idea of using earphones / headphones is still prevalent and seems irreplaceable with brands like Bose , JBL , Beats , etc . constantly improvising on the quality of these earphones / headphones today !
Ipod / Zune / Mp3 players – Early to late 2000s
This by far is the most revolutionizing change and the one that has acquired only the pros of all of its predecessors and upped the game of music portability to a whole new level . This has been an irreversible progress and the things have only become more beautiful around the concepts of ipods and MP3 players since its inception towards the end of first decade in 2000 . The ipods / Mp3 players have enjoyed so much royalty owing to the boom in the digitization of music tracks and usage of computers ! The option of getting music on to the ipod / Mp3 player was a little difficult due to a fresh concept of digitizing tracks but as years passed on this seemed a minor pot hole in its journey from being push buttons to completely touch based ipod / Mp3 devices . The ipods / Mp3 players had everything that a user would want- pocket sized , holds more than 100 tracks ( owing to lesser memory ), earphones / headphones of their choice for getting the best output , rechargeable built in battery , easy transfer of songs from computer to the device ! It seemed like this was it and we would hardly see any revolutionary change for decades to come apart from improvisation in design but as it turns out we were wrong !
Smart phones : Early 2000s to present
Smart phones are the one single destroyer of all the technological advancements so far ! Today the smart phone is what it is only in a short span of about 10-15 years ! It has given the ipods / Mp3 players a serious run for its money ! It is simply like a computer you own where you can do everything a computer does but as small as 1 / 10th the size of it . Key advantages of using a smart phone were Bluetooth connections to transfer songs between two devices , downloading songs and videos directly via internet , sharing songs via special applications through the internet . As it has turned out smart phones have beaten the ipods / Mp3 players and buried it deep under the ground !
Music streaming apps : 2010 to present
This is the latest and the most internet dependent turn that has come about in this musical journey ! Smart phones used internet to the extent of downloading and sharing songs amongst devices but music apps have become 100 % internet dependent . The most important advantage of music streaming apps is that you can listen to any song at any point in time without having the need to download , you can create playlists of your own with the same playlist being accessible worldwide to yourself and if you want , others can listen to it too ! Each of the apps is like a humongous music library accessible to anyone and everyone across the world with a simple internet connection .
Extinction of the BoomBox was inevitable considering its size and the nuisance it created but it led to one of the key discoveries of all times , the earphones / headphones ! We are listening to music using those same earphones / headphones for the past many decades and maybe will do so for many more decades to come7 , until something smaller comes around and puts it to extinction ! What are your thoughts on this ? share it with us and let us know how will our future change taking into consideration how our past has seen so many changes so quick !
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