Top Music Inventions from the Past 50 Years

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
If there's one thing many of us can relate to, it'd be our love for music, whether it's listening or playing. If you share a similar passion as I do for listening to whatever genre strikes your fancy, could you pick just one particular music-related invention that you'd consider to be the most important ever to be unveiled?

I'd personally vote for the MP3 file format, because although it wasn't the first digital music format to hit the market, it was the one that really kicked-off some amazing things to come. Such things include MP3 players (iPod, Zune, Sansa, etc), digital music sharing/purchasing and overall, the ease of handling such files. Imagine if today we still had to deal with our hard-copy CDs just to listen to the music... insane!

Online tech magazine T3 picks their top ten music inventions, and not surprisingly, the MP3 format (and even Napster) is on there, but their first is still a good one... Sony's Walkman. If you were alive in the 90's and enjoyed music, chances are you owned one of these bulky players that are quite humorous to look at today. I'm not a fan of ultra-small MP3 players such as the iPod Nano, but I sure prefer it over a book-sized player!

sony_walkman_070409.jpg

Without a shadow of a doubt, Sony’s portable music box altered the way we think about and enjoy music forever, and such an achievement has got us thinking about all the other innovations in music that should be celebrated and revered with just as much gusto. Thus, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten innovations in music tech over the last 50 years. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “Life without music would be a mistake.”


Source: T3 Magazine
 

madmat

Soup Nazi
I remember seeing my first Walkman in the very early 80's, it was, for lack of a better word, awesome. I'd almost like to find one from then to have as a collectible.
 

madstork91

The One, The Only...
Sonos Multi-Room Music System

I am in awe of this... I really LOVE the concept. In college i had a wireless keyboard that i would take with me to the living room and hit next to change the song from the other room.

My one complaint... THE FREAKING COST. Seriously... I mean... wow.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Matt, I hear you. It's a part of audio history, really. It's too bad though, I never really appreciated it back in the day for some reason. Today, we <em>really</em> take things for granted.

Stork, I agree... totally kick-ass.
 
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