Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines and Money

Mark Coleman has packed plenty of information into this little volume about the history of recorded music. The primary focus of the book is how the technology has evolved from the days when Thomas Edison presented the world with the phonograph. It is critical to understand that from the earliest days of recorded music there were always competing technologies. This continues to be the case today. Coleman does a great job of explaining why particular formats won the day and why others simply did not cut the mustard. He also discusses at length the resistance inventors encountered from the musicians who feared that these emerging technologies would cost them their livelihoods. From the cylander to discs to the LP, from 45 rpm records to 8 track tapes, cassettes, CD's and MP3's, Coleman covers just about all of the formats that have emerged over the past 125 years. For a young person eager to learn all about what came before this is an excellent read. Likewise, for older folks like myself the book gets us up to speed on what is going on out there today. I found the book to be very well written. However, I must admit that when I got to the chapter on hip-hop and mixes and club DJ's etc. I felt like I did the first time I walked into a CompUSA store 8 or 9 years ago.....like I was on another planet!!! All in all, this one is well worth your time and attention. Recommended.

I liked this book quite a lot.It's a small but concise volume, and it offers the reader a good bit of information quite economically. It is also somewhat of a walk down memory lane for technology buffs and people who grew up listening to music in general..in whatever format. It is in some respects a natural history of heard media. Mr. Coleman erects a sturdy platform from which to observe the cluttered landscape of failed and outdated technologies. His occassionally arch commentary on the actual music that some of these great technological leaps forward produced is amusing and produced more than one audible chuckle. I think that his background as a music reviewer serves him well in this respect. He clearly loves music, and has obviously found himself responding to these new technologies and sounds like all of the rest of us. In particular, his chapter on the confluence of the Beatles genius and George Martin's technological savvy (Chap. 6- Dreaming in Stereo I think), and the epochal music that emerged from their propitious alliance is brilliant. Absolutely the most clear eyed analysis I've read.

I found Playback to be not only an excellent journey through both the nuts & bolts technical history of music reproduction but an enjoyable reflection on the music of the time(s). Mr. Coleman finds a comfortable blend of business, technology and musical genealogy that reinforce the clear picture he has constructed of the music industry. With many of the questions asked or implied, I think Playback accelerates our awareness of the astonishing rate through which we are directly affecting our society with technology.