Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry

Key Changes presents a fresh perspective on the history of the music business, charting the ten key technological advancements that have disrupted it over the past century. Contrary to the common narrative that the internet and Napster delivered the industry's sole major upheaval in the 1990s, this book demonstrates that the landscape has been significantly shaken not just once, but ten times over more than 100 years.

These ten disruptions accompanied the introduction of new formats for enjoying recorded music, commencing with the cylinders and discs played on early phonographs. The narrative then progresses through the arrival of radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads, streaming, and streaming video, culminating in the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which brings a wide array of new capabilities with profound implications for the business.

The book dedicates a chapter to each of these formats, illustrating how such innovations spurred shifts in creativity, consumer behaviour, economics, and law. Each of the technological innovations covered not only disrupted the music business but also fundamentally altered its character. While the technologies themselves have evolved in distinct and varied ways across the decades, the changes within the business reveal a clear pattern.

Veteran music industry professionals and music technology experts Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt illuminate this pattern through a framework they term "the 6 Cs": cutting-edge technology, channels of distribution, creators, consumers, cash, and copyright. This framework provides valuable insight into how such seemingly disparate innovations similarly disrupted and transformed the music business in each era.

Extensively researched and enriched by interviews with Grammy-winning artists, producers, and executives, Key Changes offers an insightful perspective on the fundamental ways technology has reshaped the music industry, throughout its history and into the present day.