Print Culture, Pop Culture, and Music

I have become increasingly intrigued with the relationship between music and print culture. Seeing that the first stories ever told were basically songs in themselves, it is important to think about music when examining the history of print culture. Setting music to words was a way to remember stories before the technology to print material sources were available. With advances in technology, the context of music pertaining to print culture has evolved. Music started as a way to express oneself, and entertain, as a live art, instantaneous and every performance was original. The first major evolution of the culture of music arose when people developed ways to record music. In a huge advancement in society, ways to notate sounds changed the cultural scenery forever. Musicians no longer had to memorize their works, and they could archive their work for other artists to reproduce. This gave rise to music being a form of print. The Baroque period of music birthed the idea of printed music as a distributable good.

As time went on, and technology advanced, new ways of recording arose. Audio recording made it possible for musicians to preserve performances, and distribute their music in a new form. Then came big business. When hungry businessmen discovered that there was a market for recorded music, laws were established to “protect” artists and their products. Pop-culture responded to this evolution in various ways. They purchased devices to listen to records, tapes, compact discs, and mp3s, and were encouraged to buy these new forms of flash media. As more and more music was produced, individuals musically library expanded.

The birth the Internet gave music listeners a new way to obtain art. They could now download directly from the source, and didn’t need to physically go to a store to get a new song, performance recording, or new album. File sharing again changed how music was distributed. I find these changes supremely interesting and I want to do more research, and finally do my research paper on how music is a sub-division of print art, and I will be examining new question and ideas on the implications of these changes and what effect they have on the artists, and pop-culture.