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25 Times Music and Technology Collided

Technology — delivering music to the masses

25 Times Music and Technology Collided

January 19, 2024

Technology and music go hand-in-hand. Unless you’re singing or playing a non-electric instrument ‘round the campfire, technology is going to be involved. Sorry, Bob Dylan fans in 1965! However you like to get your fix, vinyl, tapes, CDs, MP3s and streaming services have all helped bring songs to every inch of the globe. Let’s not forget the music video either! Do your thing, technology. We see you.

25

McDonald’s MP3 Players

CRACKED MCDONALD'S MP3 PLAYERS. CRAZY FROS GHLANDO - Month No. McDonald's got in on the MP3 craze of the early 2000s with MP3 players in Happy Meals. It was basically cheap plastic shells that played one low quality popular song from Britney Spears and others. — Source

24

CRACKED BEATS BY DRE HEADPHONES USED TO BE IN ALMOST EVERY MUSIC VIDEO. In 2008 alone, they were featured in music videos by Lady Gaga, Ludacris, Pussycat Dolls, The Game, Snoop Dogg, Solange, Busta Rhymes & Linkin Park. The company was sold to Apple for $3 billion. — Source

23

BIZ MARKIE LAWSUIT CRACKED COM Biz Markie, doing what everyone did back then, was sued for sampling Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again (Naturally). On Dec 17, 1991, the court ruled that sampling without permission constituted copyright infringement, and since then, producers use interpolation or hire studio musicians to rarely rely on other records. — Source

22

MARLEY MARL CRACKED.COM In 1985, Marley Marl discovered sampling during an internship at Unique Studios. Before this, producers extended looped breakbeats with two turntables, but he discovered, by accident, that he could take a kick or snare from any record and make his own beat. — Source

21

DJ Kool Herc

DJ KOOL HERC 1520 SEDGWICK AVE. CRACKED.COM Before you change the game, you need to first create the game. On Aug 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc did just that with a block party at 1520 Sedgwick Ave in the Bronx. Using two turntables, Herc isolated the breakbeats of popular records, creating what he called The Merry-Go-Round. This innovation is considered the origin of hip hop music. — Source

20

Korn

Korn's album See You On The Other Side opens with the single Twisted Transistor, which clocks in at about 3 minutes and 9 seconds. However, if you pop the disc into a CD player and hit rewind as soon as the music starts playing, you'll find that there's a secret intro to the song, which adds a whole minute and 3 seconds to Кояп See Your the overall track length. a: The Ollow Side Source: ADVISORY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RLFWhYydqE EXPLICIO CONTENT CRACKED.COM — Source

19

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah became big because of Shrek. The song went mostly underappreciated for years, even as other artists kept covering it, until a version of it was used in a movie about an ogre, a princess, and a donkey. Then it started popping up everywhere. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

CRACKED.COM 1988: Korg M1 Synthesizer Workstation $ 1999 KORE MI 4575.77 2018: Korg M1 Synthesizer Workstation App for Ipad CIA $14.99 BROWSER COMB MULT PROG GLOBAL COMBI MODE MULTIPLE INST... KDRGMI TT FilmScore PERFORMANCE MIDI MASTER FX EASY OSC vor VDA CONTROL INSERE FX FREVER DMOO LEVEL PAR OK 78 OK vor ro Choir LIT - DEC MAKE BOUND DE ONE ORG LEVEL FAR OUT SINGLE Choir Piano 10 2 Tubul or SOURLE cao THE LEVE DRUME SKE DWINC CONO LEVEL THE out 20 3 Strings RIO DC VCI DEAL COM - 100 NK NO DEC LIVEL FAR our EL — Source

17

Early Disk Drives

CRACKED.COM The Mad Men-era washing machine-size IBM 2311 Disk Drive held 7MB. IBM That's about two songs in mp3 format. The $5.99 SanDisk Flash Cruzer Drive holds 16GB. That's over 5000 songs in mp3 format. — Source

16

Vinyl

Vinyl records sell as much as CDs. While most of the music industry's revenue comes from streaming, many people like to physically own the music they listen to. Vinyl records are a favored format for this, with sales going up as CD sales keep falling. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

Audio Jacks

Audio jacks were invented in the 19th century The jack you use today to plug in your headset is just a smaller version of the one created in the 1870s for telephone switchboards. The little fellas were adopted by the radio industry in the early 20th century, and became really popular with the arrival of Sony's Walkman in 1979. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Shot in Prague for $2.3 million by Nigel Dick, the video for It's All Coming Back to Me is a masterpiece of melodrama, all giant four-poster beds and transparent spectral lovers. There's a bit where it looks like a guy's head's fallen off that is very silly. CRACKED — Source

13

The special effects in Hype Williams' $2 million video haven't really stood the test of time, but the double entendres, skintight costumes and bits where their tongues nearly touch have. CRACKED — Source

12

Taken from the soundtrack of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, but going for a very different vibe, Joseph Kahn's $2.5 million video takes place in an anime-inspired future. Well, futuristic for 2000 - an AIBO robotic dog makes an appearance. CRACKED — Source

11

Directed by Marcus Nispel, this $2.7 million video set in the year 3002 has explosions aplenty, cameos from Danny DeVito and Dennis Hopper, and a bit where Puff Daddy releases two doves from each hand in slow motion. Incredible. CRACKED — Source

10

John Landis

The morphing technology used in John Landis's $4 million epic was totally cutting-edge stuff at the time, which could probably be done fairly well on an iPhone these days. Plus, a cameo from Macaulay goddamn Culkin. CRACKED — Source

9

Madonnna

You'll have gathered by now, Madonna really, really liked spending money on music videos. Mark Romanek's $5 million surreal masterpiece featured innovative CGI, morphing landscapes, flying witch hats and Madonna in maybe 15 different wigs. CRACKED — Source

8

Music videos are 20 years older than MTV. CINEMATIC 50 They were made for the 1960s fad Scopitone, a jukebox that could play video. CRACKED.COM — Source

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7

Pharrell

Pharrell's 24-hour music video. ISE 08:57AM AM 08 SHARE THIS MOMENT Directed by We Are from LA, the full length version of Pharrell's 2014 hit Happy is 24 hours long. It filmed hundreds of regular people and celebrities dancing to the song overll days of shooting and 42 separate locations around L.A. CRACKED — Source

6

OK Go was a pioneer in viral music videos. Their treadmill choreography in 2009's Here It Goes Again was a massive hit that led to their rube goldberg machine video for This Too Shall Pass. With a crew of 60 people, the machine synced up with the song itself and took roughly 60 takes to complete. CRACKED — Source

5

Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire's interactive SUBURBS video For their 2010 song We Used to Wait, fans could plunk in their address on thewildernessdowntown.com and see Google Maps images of their house in the video for a personalized experience. CRACKED — Source

4

A-ha's TAKE ON ME blended live action and animation. Director Steve Barron and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger used a technique called rotoscoping, which involves tracing over live-action footage, frame by frame. Four months and over 3,000 drawings later, they had arguably the most iconic music video of all time. CRACKED — Source

3

Elvis Costello had the first fully animated music video. Released in 1979, Accidents Will Happen was made by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, who created a cartoon version of the band using 35mm stills as reference. CRACKED — Source

2

Thriller

Michael Jackson's THRILLER is so much more than a music video. In December 1983, the 13-minute short film was solely responsible for increasing MTV's ratings tenfold. It is the only music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. CRACKED — Source

1

MTV

MTV had a very fitting first music video. At 12:01a.m. on August 1st, 1981, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles became the very first music video on MTV. The video was released in 1979, so the band definitely saw the changing of the guard and capitalized. CRACKED — Source

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