Canned Music

From Audcwiki, the free encyclopedia.

Music first becomes a commodity with Thomas Edison’s development of the phonograph in 1877, which played back sound from a rotating cylinder and the related development, a decade later, of Emile Berliner’s gramophone, which played back sound from a revolving disc. With these devices consumers could control their audio programming and listen to their favorite songs repeatedly. The packaging of Edison’s cylinders led consumers to call the new medium “canned music.” The weary worker could relax at home and listen to songs on demand, without expending effort.

The experience of listening to recorded music is a distinct experience from producing music or going to a concert. The ease of playing it back allows the listener to perceive the music through distraction, not through actively contemplation. Moreover, while listening to music in one’s own home undid the old experience of communal musical appreciation, the mass distribution of a single, recorded piece allowed dispersed communities to form around the appreciation of music.

The appearance of mass-produced music at the turn of the century came at a moment when leisure time was expanding and posing new problems for the recently invented profession of the manager. For if the factory and office demanded new levels of attention from the worker, they also created new heights of monotony. Both the workday and the workweek shortened so that employees could have time to recover from their dull labors, But leisure time had its own dangers: the working class could fall prey either to destabilizing mass-oriented political forces or to drink and unruly individual behavior. Welfare organizations such as the YMCA sprang up to help workers while corporations created organized recreational activities such as sports and adult education. To teach workers lasting values and make the workplace a more humane place, corporations established programs in which workers either listened to or produced music. At Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, a pipe organ and reproducing piano were installed so that musicians could play for the employees. Henry Ford hired the Detroit Symphony to play for his employees several times a year. Other corporations incorporated organized music directly into the workplace. Department stores held morning sing-alongs in order to instill politeness in their workers. All this took time out from leisure and allowed a conditioning of the workers’ lives.

next: The Wired Wireless Mass Medium