The Vinyl Countdown

LP, EP, CD, MP3, what does it all mean? All these acronyms have one thing in common, music. The oldest version of recording offered to the public was the gramophone record, created by Emilie Berliner in the early 1880’s. He competed with the famous Thomas Edison and his phonograph that was originally created to record voices and be used in offices.

The EP is closely related, seen both in vinyl and compact disks, an EP was typically sent to clubs and contained 4 or 5 songs as an overview of the artist. EP, or Extended Play, was longer than a single but shorter than a full length record.

Closely following vinyl records came the 8-Tracks, magnetic tape sound recording technology that made its debut in the 1960’s and lasted for about 20 years. In 1958 RCA introduced the first Magazine Cartridge Loading that made playing 8-Tracks simpler, but its popularity didn’t last. The newer, more efficient Compact Cassette Tape is the same magnetic tape recording system, but this reel to reel recording became one of the most popular recording devices between the 1970’s and 1990’s.

A more recognizable form of portable sounds is the development of the compact disks, or CDs. Compact disks made their debut in 1978 created by Sony and later joined together with Phillips Consumer Electronics to create a prototype available to the public. Compact Disks were originally designed to record and store sound media but have evolved to do so much more.

The newest and most advanced digital medium is the MP3. Created in Germany by Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft this “digital encoding process” basically allows you to make any music file smaller without affecting the sound quality. The MP3 has many different compression modes, allowing data size,quality, and  flexibility. That is one reason why it MP3 is the most popular form of audio file formats in this decade, although this product has been in development since 1977.