All language subtitles for SOUNDBREAKING - SO1 E08 - EN OK

SHOCKLEE: I started collecting
records at the age of 5,

and the first single I bought

was "I Want To Hold Your Hand"
by The Beatles.

I mean, my first record I bought
was "Be-Bop-A-Lula"

by Gene Vincent.

Whew.
Magical.

CARPENTER: I do remember
the very first 45 I bought

was "I Heard It
through the Grapevine,"

and singing in the kitchen
with my sisters.

NARRATOR: Records,
cassettes, CDs, and MP3s.

These are not just vehicles
for music.

They are reflections
of ourselves

and the times we live in.

HOROVITZ:
So, you had your cassette,

and you'd put
all your favorite songs on it.

MILNER:
Make a collection

that you wanted to give
to someone you liked.

HOROVITZ: This is how I feel,
you know, about you.

NARRATOR:
As technology has evolved,

each generation has had a format
to call its own.

When I was born,
people were listening to vinyl.

[ Graham Central Station's
"Your Love" playing ]

McDANlELS: The first album
I paid my own allowance for

was Larry Graham
and Graham Central Station.

That was my album.

VEGA: Everything about vinyl
was great.

The smell of it when you took it
out of the package.

JIMMY JAM:
You'd get liner notes,

which I always loved to read.

ST. VINCENT: I knew
who engineered that record,

and I knew
who produced that record.

That was my complete
and total obsession.

NELSON: This is
my modern-day jukebox here,

where I can hear new music
as it comes out.

They send it to me.
They MP3 me.

You can get access
to all the songs on the planet,

and I think that is brilliant.

CHUCK D: We're heading
to a whole bunch of new rules.

Like, some people are like, "Oh,
I miss going to a record store

and just taking the record

and opening it up
and smelling the [Sniffs]

Well, I say,
"Well, you're being a romantic.

I mean, that's wonderful.

Let's write some books
about it."

NARRATOR:
This is the story

of our on-again, off-again
love affair with musical formats

and how magical pieces
of wax, plastic, and silicon

changed the world.

All people
always think their time,

their music, was better.

Mine actually was.

BAMBAATAA:
Way back, before my time,

they had the turntable that
you used to have to crank up.

Then it has this big, fat needle
with a little pin on it,

and it could get on the record,

and you might hear the crack
and pops poppin' in it,

and they used to hear
the song comin' through a horn.

You might not have had no bass,
but you had a lot of treble,

but you still was ready
to dance with it.

GRANATA:
Those old 78 RPM records --

The grooves were cut into
shellac and were very noisy.

Those 78s, their playing time
was three minutes, each side.

The 78 was, you know, big,
and it broke.

GRANATA:
In the 1940s, two major rivals

had been experimenting
with a way

to create a quieter record
with a longer playing time.

There was Columbia,
headed by William Paley,

and RCA Victor, which was headed
by David Sarnoff.

Sarnoff had RCA,
and they had everything, okay?

They had radio.
They invented the record player.

They invented the record,

the record
being the 10-inch shellac 78.

So, in 1948, Sarnoff, going
along merrily, owning the world,

and this upstart Paley,
10 years younger,

invites him to the CBS office
and says, "Listen, David,

we want you to hear
our new product."

And he plays him
the first 33 album.

LPs play for 25 instead of
4 minutes without interruption.

GRANATA: As though it were
a top-secret mission,

Paley had his engineers create
a long-playing vinyl record

before RCA had the chance
to come out with their version,

so that really aggravated
Sarnoff.

VAN ZANDT:
So, Sarnoff leaves there

and calls his entire office
into the room,

and says, you know,
"You have exactly five minutes

to explain to me how this punk
beat me to the punch

with something new."

And they go through
all their files

looking for some way
to combat this,

and they go all the way back
to their very first record.

It happened to be a 7-inch disc.

And they create the 7-inch 45.

MAN: On the new distortion-free
RCA Victor 45 RPM record.

GRANATA: What are teenagers
listening to on the radio?

They're listening
to one song, two songs,

that are the most popular.

So let's come out with a disc
that has two songs on it,

and we'll sell it for 50 cents.

VAN ZANDT: And, along
with the kid's records,

the kid's record player,

which he takes into his room
by himself to play his records.

And a whole new thing is born
called "teenage rock 'n' roll."

ANKA:
Music was everywhere,

and it was always a social event

based around
that funny little machine.

BECK: To hear Eddie Cochran,
"Twenty Flight Rock."

That was it, when this thing

used to whirl around and almost
rattle itself off the table

'cause it's spinning so fast.

DALTREY:
The rock single was the thing

that really made us all
want to be rock singers

or guitarists or in a band,

and it was the noise of it.

MARTIN:
What amazed me

was the sheer technical ferocity
of the stuff.

Volume !

I could actually see
the loudness

of the record in the groove.

The louder
you could make a pop record,

the better
it was likely to sell.

ROONEY: Rock 'n' roll
was considered bad

for the youth of America

by a lot of people,
mostly adults.

Music was segregated
during the '50s.

People used to call black music
race music.

And a lot of the people
used to think

that it was
a little too suggestive.

The 45 records,

I think, did a lot
for bringing the races together.

I think it was beginning of
the end for that old race music.

STOLLER: Jerry and I
were young white kids,

even though we liked
to think of ourselves as black,

who loved black music,

and those were the artists
that we wanted to write for.

LEIBER:
I first met Big Mama Thornton

in Johnny Otis' rehearsal space.

She was quite intimidating.

STOLLER:
She had a few scars on her face,

looked like razor scars,
but she could sing.

The A&R man, Johnny Otis,
called and said,

"I'm doing a session with her,

and I need songs,
so you better come on down."

LEIBER: She was wearing
old farmer jeans.

She looked like she didn't have
much use for guys like us.

STOLLER: Her actual
physical being inspired Jerry.

I think it probably
took us about 10 minutes

to write "Hound Dog."

LEIBER:
I said, "You know what, man?

I'm not happy with this song."

I said, "'You ain't nothin'
but a hound dog' is not --

It's not enough kick.

I want something really dirty,

like 'Dirty Mother Furrier'
don't you know?"

And I said, "No, they
won't play that on the radio."

I really want something
that's really kick-ass.

Hound dog?
I mean, give me a break.

We attempted
to interest her in the song.

She snatched the paper
out of my hand.

She said, "What's this?"
I said, "That's the song."

She said, "This the song?"
I said, "Yeah."

? You ain't nothin'
but a hound dog ?

STOLLER:
I remember Jerry saying,

"It doesn't go like that,
Big Mama."

She said, "White boy, don't tell
me how to sing the blues."

? You ain't nothin'
but a hound dog ?

? Been snooping
around the door ?

And we knew we had a hit.

JOHN:
My mum came home with a record.

She said,
"I've just heard this record,

and it's a sort of music
I've never heard before."

She said, "But it's fantastic."

And she said, "Listen to it."

It was a total introduction

to a different sort
of music, obviously,

which I found out later
to have its roots in blues

and rockabilly and folk
and country and gospel.

But, you know, Elvis Presley,
you know, was the one.

Thanks to Elvis, we were able
to combine a mixture

of what they thought
white felt and what blacks felt.

Elvis brought a style of his own

of wiggling his behind
and what have you

and singing the same song
by Big Mama Thornton,

and all of a sudden,
it became acceptable.

When I heard
Elvis' rendition of "Hound Dog,"

I thought
it was kind of rockabilly,

didn't have any blood in it.

STOLLER: But, after it sold
7 million records,

it started to sound better.

GRANATA: Big Mama Thornton's
recording of "Hound Dog" in 1953

did very well.

It was a 78 RPM
that sold between half a million

and a million copies.

When Elvis' came out
on a 45 RPM record in 1956,

it sold 10 million copies.

And that was a turning point
for the 45.

[ "In the Wee Small Hours
of the Morning" plays ]

Meanwhile, other artists
are beginning to make inroads

with the 33 1/3 LP.

By 1954, Frank Sinatra
is at the top of his game,

the sweet spot
for his voice and his work.

At the same time, he's got
this deep emotional upheaval,

'cause he's really carrying
a torch for Ava Gardner,

to whom he's still married,
but not with.

He's already broken up with her.

And when he walked
into the Capitol studio

to record
"In the Wee Small Hours,"

he understood that he could use
this new format, the LP,

for long-form expression.

ROSEN:
Before the long-playing record,

we had a 3-minute-long song.

Now we could have
a long-form musical story,

and so Sinatra
created this crazy thing

called the "concept record."

GRANATA: Frank sat
with little pieces of paper

with each song title on it,

and he would shuffle them around
so that they told a story.

16 songs, single statement --

what it's like to lose
your love.

? While I sit and sigh ?

Frank always wanted Ava back,

and what we hear
in "In the Wee Small Hours"

is a reflection of that anguish

that he had lost
this great love of his life.

This landmark album coincided
with true high-fidelity sound,

the LP, magnetic tape,

and these gorgeous
Neumann microphones

that gave you
the most incredible richness.

I mean, as we're sitting here
at Capitol,

I still get blown away
by this room.

Right on that exact spot

there was
a full orchestra setup,

and Sinatra was facing this way,

and he sang all the songs.

CASH: I was just
in the old Capitol building,

and we went in that room

where Sinatra
recorded with Nelson Riddle

those great classic records.

And that microphone.

It was just so goosebump-y.

GRANATA:
In creating this concept album,

Sinatra solidified a format
for all of music to follow.

When 78 RPM discs
were the format,

and the only format out there,

it didn't really matter in jazz
whether it was a small group,

a singer and band, a big band,

they would all kind of record
the same way,

which was we've got
to get this in and done

within 3 1/2 minutes.

WAS: If you listen
to a Charlie Parker 78,

they're short solos.

It just goes around
a couple of times,

and then he's out of time.

So, suddenly, the LP
gave jazz musicians

the opportunity
to express themselves.

KAHN:
In the spring of 1959,

Miles Davis went into
the New York Columbia Studio

and recorded "Kind of Blue."

Miles Davis created new kinds
of freedoms,

the idea of modal scales,
no chordal structures.

He wanted to kind of allow the
individual voices of the soloist

to come through and begin
speak in extended paragraphs.

The tracks
are all roughly 9 minutes,

10 minutes, 12 minutes long.

It was released
in August of '59,

and by the end of that year,

it had already become the bible
for many musicians.

WAS: "Kind of Blue," you know,
it's still in the jazz top 10.

Can you imagine that?

I don't know that it ever left.

ANKA: Well, the '50s
and the early '60s,

the single record was the thing.

If you didn't have that,

you didn't get the album,
which was the follow-through,

and then you didn't have
a career.

JAMES:
And radio was the way

you put new records
in front of the public,

- so I loved AM radio.
- DEEJAY: Be happy.

Come on, everybody. It's
a beautiful night in Chicago.

JAMES: These 50,000-watt
clear-channel stations --

I mean, WLS in Chicago would hit
10 million to 20 million people.

Hi, everybody all over America.
This is your Cousin Brucie.

It's the WABC party.
Go, go. Whoo!

JAMES:
They'd hit 38 states at night.

MAN: [ Echoing ]
Number one!

? You never close your eyes ?

JAMES: There's nothing more
exciting thing on this earth

than an exploding
smash-hit single,

because it just --

It happens everywhere at once,
and it just goes.

It's like an atomic bomb.

DEEJAY: Tommy James
and the Shondells, "Mony Mony."

ANKA:
So, you knew going in the studio

that everything you had to say

had to be no longer
than 2 minutes and 30 seconds,

or shorter, if you wanted
to get on the radio.

ROBERTSON:
This is, like, 1965.

We were zooming
around Manhattan.

And John Hammond Jr. said,

"Listen, a friend of mine
is recording,

and I said
I would stop in and say hello

and hear a little bit
of what he's doing."

So we went
to Columbia Recording Studios.

[ Bob Dylan's "Like
a Rolling Stone" playing ]

And Bob Dylan
and these musicians

were in there recording,

and they were recording
"Like a Rolling Stone."

Once upon a time,
you dressed so fine

Threw the bums a dime
in your prime

Didn't you

People call, say,
"Beware, doll

You're bound to fall,"
you thought they were all

Kidding you

And I didn't know him,
but I thought,

"This song
is really interesting."

It was like a different kind
of songwriting.

Dion from Dion and the Belmonts
was there.

DION:
It was great to watch.

Dylan had recorded some albums
with just his guitar,

and now he had
a few of the guys

from the Brill Building come up
and played with, you know,

drums, a full band behind him.

Your next meal

How does it feel

It was exciting.

He was like somebody let him
out of a cage or something.

He knew what he was about and
exactly what he wanted to do.

You couldn't sway him,

'cause I heard some musicians
say, "Listen, you can't do."

He said, "Follow me."

Like a rolling stone

"Like a Rolling Stone,"
in my opinion,

is the greatest single
anyone has ever made.

It's a really
ambitious statement

to put in a rock 'n' roll 45

just a couple years past,
like, "Be My Baby."

At Napoleon in rags

And the language
that he used

Go to him now, he calls you,
you can't refuse

When you ain't got nothing

You got nothing to lose

You're invisible now

? You've got no secrets
to conceal ?

SPITZ: Columbia had really
become an album company.

Bob makes what is perhaps
the longest single ever made.

It's six minutes long.

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

"Like a Rolling Stone,"
all of a sudden,

it becomes a hit single.

DEEJAY: Now Bobby Dylan
comes front and center at WHK

with song number six
on the survey.

This is called
"Like a Rolling Stone."

You're gonna hear the whole
six-minute version here.

WAS: I think the impact of radio
was huge, you know,

but maybe we can offer more to
go along with the advertising.

? You walk into the room
with your pencil in your hand ?

? You see somebody naked ?

Bob Dylan,
you know what he did?

He brought in thinking
single-handedly.

And it was brought home to me
by John Lennon,

who adored Bob Dylan,

and Dylan would use phrases
that Lennon would pick up on.

So, he picked up
on those lyrics.

Well, we can actually tell
the truth?

You know, we can actually
talk about our own lives?

? Something is happening here ?

? But you don't know
what it is ?

? Do you, Mr. Jones? ?

People really
didn't do that very much.

I mean, Sinatra certainly
sounded like he was doing it,

but now here's Dylan
actually throwing in something

that certainly
seemed autobiographical.

DONAHUE: This is Tom Donahue
back in action.

This is KSAN in San Francisco.

Rachel and I
will be here until midnight.

VAN ZANDT:
Around '69, FM radio started,

which meant, you know, the
deejays were slowed down now.

DEEJAY: And that's the way it
was, and that's the way it is,

and it's always changing,
and it is always the same.

VAN ZANDT: And they were
talking more conversationally,

and it was all sort of being
taken much more seriously.

We went out
with Hubert Humphrey

in 1968
on the presidential campaign.

He was, of course,
running for president.

He was the vice president.

Well, when
we went out on the campaign...

...the big acts of the day

were The Rascals,
The Association,

The Buckinghams,
Gary Puckett, us.

You know -- all singles acts.

90 days later,
when we get back, no kidding,

the hottest acts
are Led Zeppelin,

Blood, Sweat & Tears,

Crosby, Stills & Nash --

all album acts.

We knew that if we were
gonna stay in this business,

we had to sell albums.

VAN ZANDT:
Led Zeppelin, I believe,

was the first one
to tell the record company

they were not permitted
to put out a hit single anymore,

because they were
just so uncool.

All of a sudden, the '50s,

people are on album covers,
they're all smiling.

The '60s hit,

you didn't smile
on album covers anymore.

Kennedy was assassinated.

Rock 'n' roll
went down about five octaves.

It got serious.

WAS: All of a sudden, the album
took on all this value.

You didn't want to miss a --
You wanted every song.

Every song was important.

You had to make
a complete artistic statement

with your whole project.

And then, for black people,
that album is by Marvin Gaye.

BOYD: Marvin Gaye, a lot of
people don't realize the career

he had with Motown
before reaching this point.

The early '70s,

he's done the duets
with Tammi Terrell,

which are very popular.

Tammi Terrell
suffers a very tragic fate.

Marvin's very, of course,
distraught.

QUESTLOVE: He left the road
after Tammi Terrell's death,

you haven't heard new material
in two years,

and now that his brother's home
from Vietnam,

and he has this vision
of being a messenger.

I started to think
about the war in Vietnam

and my brother, who was --

He used to tell me,

write, respond with some pretty
horrible stories about the war.

I became quite affected by them.

At the same time, there was a
great deal of unrest in America.

Civil rights, black power,
Vietnam.

These shootings of the kids
on the college campuses.

QUESTLOVE:
Berry Gordy headed Motown,

and he's like, "No,
we're not a message company.

You're not gonna
release this album."

BOYD: Berry Gordy doesn't want
this kind of music

because Berry Gordy's
been making money

by selling pop songs --
"Stop! In the Name of Love,"

"I Heard It
through the Grapevine."

He wants that Marvin,

and Gordy, it turns out,
was wrong. Quite wrong.

And Marvin records
this incredible album.

It's a concept album --
"What's Going On."

QUESTLOVE:
For a lot of us,

like, that's black people's
"Times Are A-Changing."

And you go from song to song.

QUESTLOVE:
Everything is a suite.

No one ever considers
the first six songs

on "What's Going On"
as six songs.

Like, the entire side one
is just one song to me.

CHERRY: I think for me,
it was in 1972, '73.

It's mixed with a very dark,
difficult time in my life.

CHERRY: And, to me,
when I hold my original copy

of "What's Going On," you know,

it takes me back to living
on Ninth Street in New York

and the memory of how much
it was raining in that period,

and I don't know
whether that association

comes with Marvin Gaye
on the record sleeve

in patent black raincoat
with raindrops on his coat

or a real memory.

It's an incredible album that
expresses and holds so much,

which is why I think it was
such a meaningful record

and still is.

BOYD: The only problem with
that album -- It's too short,

meaning I need more.

I want more.
I'm not done.

McDANlELS:
You know what's crazy?

Those albums -- Marvin Gaye,
John Lennon, Bob Dylan --

those records, that music,
those artists were our lives.

Our lives is on that vinyl.

MILNER: During the '70s,
especially in the rock world,

the LP was king.

But it had drawbacks.

They can scratch,

they're certainly not portable,

and there was no way
to make one easily.

You had to go
in a recording studio.

You couldn't just make an LP
at home.

? Rah-rah, rumble seats
and running boards ?

[ Cassette player clicks ]

MAN: Music in pocket size
and instant loading.

MILNER: The cassette tape was
a good example of a technology

that really didn't even
pretend to be an advance

over what came before
in terms of sound quality.

It was, however,
very, very portable.

MAN: You record from your radio
or make your own programs.

MILNER: And, for the first time,
anybody could make a recording.

It's very easy to make,
like, a direct, you know,

from vinyl-to-tape recording.

GODRICH:
I just taped all my friends.

Yeah, I just had
thousands of cassettes.

You know,
I was pirating as a child.

You know, absolutely.

Think about when you were a
kid, and you're going to school,

and your pockets are like this,
and it's, like, all tapes.

GROHL: We would make cassettes
and share them with friends,

and we would pass them around,

and then we'd go see those bands
when they came into town,

and we felt like that music
was ours.

[ The Cure's "Love Song"
playing ]

MILNER: Of course,
you could also make mix tapes,

so essentially,
you could create your own LPs.

HOROVITZ: You had your cassette
for a dollar,

and you'd put
all your favorite songs on it.

MILNER: You could find
connections between songs.

You could find thematic things.

HOROVITZ: If I was making
a tape for you, I'd be like,

"You know what? I have
a feeling you're gonna like

these particular types
of songs."

You'd maybe put
some romantic things on there.

You'd try to be cool with it.

This is how I feel,
you know, about you.

MILNER: This particular
selection of songs

in this particular order --
It was a big deal.

QUESTLOVE:
It's an extent of your arm.

It's an extent
of your personality.

There's a girl
that you're really into,

the first thing I'd do is,
I'd go make her a mix tape.

MILNER: It was a document
for who you were at that moment,

who you -- how you wanted
the rest of the world

to see you through the prism
of the music that you loved.

CHERRY: I remember getting
a mix tape from Corona, Queens.

It was Spoonie Gee.

It was just, like, a cassette
from, like, a bodega,

and I think
I probably killed it.

You know, I played it to death.

It was, like, the first real
uncommercial hip-hop,

sounding like
it was coming off the street.

And I fell in love with it.

GROHL: The first music scene
that I fell in love with

was the punk-rock scene.

My cousin Tracy,
she brought me upstairs,

and she showed me
her record collection,

and she had fan zines.

And you'd go to the back
of one of those fan zines,

and there'd be
this classified-ad section

with, "Hey, I have a band.
Here's my demo tape.

It's only $2.50.

Send two stamps, and I'll send
you a sticker and my cassette."

And I realized there was
this whole underground network.

Like, "Whoa, man.

All of this is happening

without anybody having
any idea it's going on."

WYBENGA: A huge part
of the Dead experience

and the Deadhead experience,
in particular,

has been
all these bootleg cassettes.

The Grateful Dead live --
It was just a dragon.

In the studio, we never
could bring out that dragon.

That dragon never
really happened in a room

without people, you know,

and there was no way
we could remember

what we did the night before.

That was not possible,

because we were taking
mind-altering drugs every night.

GARCIA: Some nights,
it would be just awful,

and some nights,
it would be wonderful.

If we're experiencing
authentic inspiration,

then something magical
sort of takes over.

CANTOR-JACKSON: The experience
of a Grateful Dead show,

it is hard to describe.

It was
like a religious experience.

You go there, a lot of it
was the partaking of LSD,

our sacrament at the time.

When we all got to that level,
the music would just soar.

It would go off,
and the crowd would go with us.

I mean, the whole audience
was in the same place.

WYBENGA: You have music
that is highly improvisational

and not played
the same way twice.

You had this impulse
to document.

MAN: Follow the chords
from those microphones, folks.

MAN #2:
Yeah, right.

MAN #1: Let's find out
who these people are.

The Deadheads were recording
our performances,

and that was illegal.

MAN #1:
Put that spotlight out there

on that microphone,
the periscope.

You'll see it sticking up there.

HART: And they ran
their copies of cassettes,

and then
they would give it away.

It was called a Grateful Dead
Free Tape Exchange.

MAN: Underground Records,
Incorporated.

So, we said,
"We don't want to be cops,

and we don't want
to hire more security.

- Let 'em come."
- [ Instruments tuning ]

WYBENGA: I know it came
to a head in the '80s

when their sound man
had problems consistently

with microphones
blocking his sight lines

from the back of the house.

MAN: You down there
with the microphone,

if you want to get
a decent recording,

you got to move back
about 40 feet.

Eventually, the Grateful Dead
addressed this whole issue

of taping by giving tapers
their own section.

HART:
It built an army of tapers.

They were responsible
for making the Grateful Dead

a world phenomenon,

and that was one of
the smartest moves we ever made.

WYBENGA: Having a Dead
tape collection was a display

right there of the depth
of your commitment to the band,

a form of social currency.

One of the first tapes
that I heard was 7/13/84,

Greek Theater --
just a nice little show.

And then 1977 was an improbable
height of sorts for them --

the tightness of the playing.

5/7/77, for a long time,
was my favorite.

And that's a show
that had come into circulation

through Betty Cantor-Jackson.

CANTOR-JACKSON: My stuff is
not taper stuff. It's different.

My stuff is always direct

from the mikes on the stage
from the band.

WYBENGA: Betty Cantor-Jackson
had done various sound work

for the Dead
throughout the years,

had been a part of that Dead
family since very early on.

CANTOR-JACKSON: I did the taping
pretty much for my own pleasure

and for Jerry.

He'd come over the next morning,
sit in my living room,

and have a cappuccino
and listen to the playback.

It's something I really enjoy,

just carving music
into the tape, you know.

WYBENGA: These pristine
soundboard recordings

became the source of what became
known as The Betty Boards --

bootleg cassettes that started
to emerge in the late '80s.

So a lot of shows that
Deadheads had loved already,

even in poor sound quality,
became available

in crystal-clear sound quality.

CANTOR-JACKSON: I think they'd
been out there for quite a while

before I ever knew about it.

I heard some of them recently
that were amazing.

WYBENGA: You know,
it's interesting to think

whether this all would have
shaken out the same way

if cassettes tapes didn't exist.

You've got to figure
that the Grateful Dead

has to be the most recorded
musical ensemble in history.

WOMAN: The cassette industry
is booming.

For the first time ever,
prerecorded cassettes

are beginning to rival sales
of the vinyl disc.

GRANATA: The thing
that really drove cassette sales

was the advent
of a handheld cassette player

that you could listen to
with headphones.

LUDWIG: They came up with
a really good set of headphones

for these little Walkmans,
and for the first time,

you could take a device this big
with a good set of headphones

and climb the top
of Mount Everest,

and you could listen
to a Mahler symphony

and get chills down your spine.

MAN:
The Sony Walkman

has forever changed the way
the world listens to music.

That was exciting new
technology, because basically,

it inaugurated the era
of private listening.

It was about walking in the
street with your headphones on

and the music being contained
to your personal space.

DJ SPOOKY:
The idea that being able

to have your own soundtrack
wherever you went,

that's what really, I think,
changed the game.

MILNER: You could actually take
them with you on the bus.

You had the sound
right there in your head.

By 1983,
the labels had records,

and they had cassettes.

They didn't see anything
really new on the horizon.

INTERPRETER: It's a disc,
a digital audio disc,

a gizmo so revolutionary
that backers hope it will make

records and tapes obsolete.

KNOPPER: The CD
sounded really, really good,

but the record industry
has always been

deeply suspicious
of new technology.

Industry executives said, you
know, "No F'ing way," basically.

"We will never get
the compact disc."

And the reason was because they
were so worried about piracy.

When you copied a CD
to a cassette tape,

that was a pristine copy.

But the CD was cool.

At the time, it sounds
so quaint now, but it was shiny,

and if you tilted it a certain
way, it looked like a rainbow.

It didn't scratch,

and you could play it,
potentially, in your car,

and so the consumers
really liked this thing.

And certain artists were saying,

"We're gonna make
much greater-sounding records

with this new technology."

LUDWIG: Dire Straits,
"Brothers in Arms" --

It was really
the first compact disc

that I mastered
completely 100% as a CD.

KNOPFLER:
"Brothers in Arms" itself

struck a lot of chords
with people.

This fellow
was a soldier in the Gulf War,

and he said that they fought
this tank battle all night,

and then in the dawn, they
just linked up all the tanks

and played "Brothers in Arms."

Sometimes, I'll write a song

that will somehow reverberate
with events,

and it can just be a success.

At the time, I was just
making another record.

LUDWIG:
Not only was it a great record,

it was a real landmark CD,

and lots of people
bought compact discs

because of that record.

That record sold a lot
of CD players.

QUARTARARO:
And towards the end of the '80s,

people started
to rebuy their music

they already owned on vinyl.

They started to repurchase
the same collection on CD.

$18, $19, $20 for a CD
that was really worth no more,

or maybe even less, than the LP.

HADLEY:
They ran a bit of a hustle.

They were able to sell CDs

and have maybe
one or two good songs on it.

IOVINE: You got a record deal,
you got one song,

you put 17 other songs on
because they fit,

and the people bought albums
for $18 that had one song on it.

WAS: When we look at the decline
in the popularity of the album

and of sales,
I think that was just way worse

than some college students

downloading songs for free,
you know.

It was, like, making
shitty records. [ Chuckles ]

MAN:
With the click of a mouse,

Napster allows fans
to download virtually any song

completely free.

MILNER:
In 1999, some college students

created a file-sharing program
called Napster.

HADLEY: All of a sudden,
people are like, "Wait a minute.

I don't have to drive
to the record store, pay $20

to buy a CD that just has
two songs on it that I like?

I can sit at home and download
countless albums for nothing?"

And it just was like
you just discovered

this gold mine, you know.

Just, all of a sudden,
all of the music you want

is right there in front of you,
and it's very easy to download.

STRANG: When they put music up
for file sharing,

40-some-odd million people came.

And, you know,
there were other companies,

like, giving away money
on the Internet,

and you couldn't get
40 million people to come.

So the power of music was
the first thing that struck me.

I was like, "Wow."

MILNER: The courts struck down
Napster after two years,

but by then,
there were all these services

all over the Internet,

and they all used
the same new format -- the MP3.

I was taking my daughter
to school,

and one of the parents
that I didn't know turned to me

and said, "Congratulations
on being the mother of the MP3."

So I went home and looked it up,
and, sure enough,

it had this story
about how this engineer

called Karlheinz Brandenburg
had used

the original unremixed version
of "Tom's Diner"

to test this thing he was
working on, called the MP3.

BRANDENBURG: My research was
how to compress music in a way

so that it would fit
through a phone line,

and I already thought,
"I'm pretty much done.

Everything works well."

Someone was playing
"Tom's Diner" down the hall.

BRANDENBURG:
Suzanne Vega's voice

sounds like
she is standing in a room,

and it's a very clear
and clean voice, and I said,

"Okay, I want to try to see
what our algorithms do with it."

Unfortunately, Suzanne Vega's
voice was destroyed.

It took us a couple of years

until we really could do
her voice perfectly clean.

VEGA: I had no idea
what would come next,

and I met Karlheinz Brandenburg,

and they were talking
about this great new thing

that was just gonna be
the coolest.

You could play music on
your phone, on your cellphone.

I remember thinking
that's kind of -- Who cares?

Like, I don't need to play music
on my phone.

I just did not see
what the MP3 --

what the future was gonna be.

I didn't see it coming.

HADLEY: Early 2000s
are really tumultuous period,

because a format change.

Digital technologies
recalibrate almost everything

about how we consume music.

WOMAN:
You plug it into your computer

and download
your favorite songs.

HADLEY: iTunes comes along and
is selling songs for 99 cents.

The music industry
is just reeling.

WOMAN: The best-selling digital
music player in the nation,

revolutionizing the way
Americans of all ages

listen to music.

HADLEY:
MP3s unravel what we know

about people wanting albums,

and so, interestingly enough,

we're back
to a singles-driven culture.

We take it for granted now,

but then it was
a really remarkable concept

that I could walk around
with 10,000 songs in my pocket?

But then,
with the era of YouTube,

one of the main pieces
of content

that people want to upload
is music.

They want to upload
their favorite song.

They want to upload this video

that they made
to their favorite song.

And YouTube still, I believe,

is the number-one music
streaming service in the world.

Justin Bieber's songs
have been listened to --

Some of them have been listened
to 400 million times on YouTube.

We listen to music
on our earbuds,

over our telephones,
through computers.

MAN: When I'm listening
to full albums on YouTube,

people just upload them,

and sometimes it'll just go
to the next video.

Oddly enough, YouTube
is kind of like a new radio.

CDs are just disappearing,
you know?

CDs are dead.

ROSEN:
Today, we have a format

which is
almost an invisible format.

There is an amazing amount of,

you know,
these streaming services.

My preferred method of
listening to music is Spotify.

Soundcloud.

I Heart Radio.

Sometimes Pandora.

Sometimes iTunes.
I'll buy songs.

I don't know. I actually like
that it's not physical.

I feel like it saves
time, energy, money.

Our kids, our grandkids will
literally be baffled by the idea

that, at one point,
people owned music.

GARBUS:
Whether we like it or not,

people want music
instantaneously

at their fingertips.

I do. I want to turn on my Rdio
or Spotify or whatever.

I want to say
I really need to hear

"Dancing in the Sheets"
by Shalamar right now.

And I can have that, you know?

That is just the world
that we live in.

The problem I have
is discovering good new music.

There's just an overwhelming
abundance of material.

MANN: Trying to figure out
which technology,

it became such a different
experience on so many levels

that I just
stopped listening to music.

It's only been lately
that I've started again

and kind of almost
giving myself permission

to jump back into stuff
from the '70s

that I never paid
any attention to, like Bread.

KNOPPER: The format shift
in the record industry,

I mean, on average
is usually 15, 20 years.

Everything's up in the air now.

The next 5 to 10 years
will be super-interesting.

But the power of music
will always be massive.

MARGOULEFF:
It's about the song.

It's about the art,
not the medium.

BOYD: Music transcends
the technology, the format.

Whatever form you give it to me
in, if the quality's good,

if I can access
what I want to hear,

I'm a happy man.

QUARTARARO: What won't change
is your relationship with music,

because sometime this year,

you're gonna hear a song
that makes you want to cry.

And we human beings
have been trying to work out

what it is about the mathematics
of the arrangement

of musical notes that elicits
an emotional response in us,

and it's still a mystery.

Our lives are pretty much
defined by, what,

I don't know, 20, 30 records?

RZA:
How many ever years passes

when you want to go back
to your high-school memory --

A song could do it for you.

There's always that piano,
that verse,

that voice, that beat, that cut,
that scratch, that guitar riff,

that's gonna save your life.

I'm so grateful
to all the musicians

that made the music
that I ever heard,

because it all went in,
and it enriched my life.

And we've seen now
100 years of recorded sound,

and we've seen the effect
of that sound on people,

and it has been
quite remarkable.

It's changed our lives.