The music industry has come a long way from when it began. One of the earliest forms of recording sound was invented by a person named Thomas Edison in 1877 which was called 'phonograph'.

Authors Avatar

Keran Sharma
Media Studies – Music Industry
Stantonbury Campus - 52320



The music industry has come a long way from when it began. One of the earliest forms of recording sound was invented by a person named Thomas Edison in 1877 which was called ‘phonograph’. The phonograph initially had a major disadvantage - the records could not be duplicated but this problem was overcome when the gramophone was invented. The gramophone was similar to the phonograph but allowed music to be copied onto flat discs as many times as the user wanted. The gramophone became a conventional part of the 20th century and by 1914 over one third of all British households owned a machine. In 1958 the first stereo records were issued in the UK enabling listeners to experience a more 3 dimensional sound effect. After the years of the Stereo Records, tape records were introduced and soon after CD’s came in to provide us with the very best of recorded sound. Since then, new forms of recording music have been coming in such as MD players.  

The music industry is very competitive and getting to the top requires connections to people already in the industry as well as sheer luck and talent. The process of getting a record deal can be one that requires a lot of effort, self-esteem (rejections are a big part of the business) and can be time consuming. Often, you can find yourself in the position of working for months on something but achieving nothing out of it. Bands usually start by practicing in their own time and playing at local venues. This is where most of the bands get noticed as people from record companies visit many of these local gigs to pick up young, new talent. If the band is lucky and gets spotted then the procedure is cut sort. If not, the band records a demo tape and send it off to various record companies hoping to get heard. This is one of many routes available into the industry. Another way is where record companies hoping to manufacture a band advertise to get the attention of anyone wishing to take part in auditions. There are several disadvantages to this such as the bands image and genre is decided and controlled by the people who are putting the band together. As well as this, the band members do not know each other.

For our project, we were asked to put together a band and promote it by making a CD cover. Before we started this task there were many factors to consider such as the genre of the band as this would determine the final outcome of the way the CD cover would look. For example, if the genre was pop and the group was a 5 piece girl band then the colours on there would be bright and girly. If the genre were rock or grunge, the colours would be dark and the cover would be more serious, displaying a more dramatic image of the band. We also needed to decide upon how we would dress for our photo-shoot. Again, this would depend on the chosen genre.

Join now!

Originally, we were in a group of four; Me, Mandy, Jay and Sophie. We had chosen our genre of punk as neither of us dress punky and thought that it would be a good opportunity to dress up. We looked further into this style and looked at different punk/grunge CD covers, names of albums and the style of clothing. However, our idea failed as Mandy and Sophie changed their mind on the day of the photo shoot and so our group split up to work individually. As I had already done some background work to put towards this project, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay