ABSTRACT
The history of music is in part one of a shift from oral performance to notation, then to music being recorded and stored, and disseminated utilising various mediums of sound (and visual) transmission. These are hardly discrete stages, but they do offer an organising logic for the overview here. Any new medium of communication or technological form changes the way in which we experience music, and this has implications for how we relate to and consume music. Technological changes in recording equipment pose both constraints and opportunities in terms of the organisation of production, while developments in musical instrumentation allow the emergence of 'new' sounds. New recording formats and modes of transmission and dissemination alter the process of musical production and consumption, and raise questions about authorship and the legal status of music as property.
