The first music-playing device able to both record and play back music was the phonograph. The old-time music player - AKA the phonograph - was created by Thomas Edison in July 1877 and captured sounds and engraved the movements into tinfoil cylinders.
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue recording and reproduction of sound.
1857, Phonautograph
The earliest device that could record sound was the phonautograph, invented by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1857. It worked by transcribing soundwaves as undulations through a traced line on either glass or smoke-blacken paper.
phonograph, also called record player, instrument for reproducing sounds by means of the vibration of a stylus, or needle, following a groove on a rotating disc.
The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo. In particular, Sony's Walkman and Discman are the ancestors of digital audio players such as Apple's iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: Devices that play CDs.
Before music machines evolved into the wireless listening devices we have today, they started off as graphophones, gramophones and music boxes. After Edison's phonograph became known to the public, other inventors began taking the same methods he used to create newer and better ways to record sound.
The song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3 format. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time he refined the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice.
In 1997, the world's first MP3 player, the MPMan F10, was developed by a South Korean company SaeHan Information Systems. The world's first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player.
The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for personal stereos of any producer or brand. By 2010, when production stopped, Sony had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans. Released: 1979 Japan, 1980 U.S.
And because the first Walkman included two headphone jacks, music could be enjoyed with a friend. In 1983, cassettes outsold vinyl for the first time, largely thanks to the Walkman and similar devices from other manufacturers.
Phonograph. The earliest recorded music format was the wax cylinder phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877.
Before the phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, the only way for people to consume music was by attending the live performance in question.
The first (made on March 12, 1932), of Scriabin's Prometheus: Poem of Fire, is the earliest known surviving intentional stereo recording.
Americans did not buy prerecorded records or CDs and play them on stereo equipment. Instead, most American popular music was produced in the home, most likely on a piano, from sheet music purchased from one of many sheet music companies.
Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds of programs, from sermons to soap operas. In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders.
After the Walkman, came the Discman, which gave way to MP3 players, that in turn led to the birth of iPod, which was the genesis of the iPhone in more than one way and the world since then has never been the same.
Since then, Sony has made designs with more purpose-built hardware, and today there are a whole series of Android-powered Walkman music players out there.
Digital audio players, 1998
Despite their widespread popularity, and the periodic updates Sony continued to make, both the Walkman and the Discman were limited by their form factor. At their core, all Walkmans and Discmans needed to house, protect, and read the media contained within.
Invented in 1979, the Walkman allowed people to listen to music of their choice while walking, running or ignoring other people on the subway. In 1985 a Walkman cost between $69 and $99, which translates to between $168 and $241 in today's dollars.
It may surprise you that MP3 players (also known as digital audio players or DAPs) are still very much around. The MP3 players in 2023 can sync to streaming services like Spotify, color and touchscreen displays, and expansive storage options.
What does MP3 stand for? MP3 is an abbreviation for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, a data compression format for encoding digital audio, most commonly music.
Sure, there are still "MP3" players on the market today, but they are cheaper, more consumer-friendly devices that can only play back MP3 formatted files (in most cases). Since most high-resolution audio is formatted in this way, the music player is going to be able to take full advantage of the data.
1888: 'The Lost Chord'
This is the earliest recording of music known to exist. In 1888 a recording of Arthur Sullivan's song 'The Lost Chord' was etched onto a phonograph cylinder.
The short answer is: No one knows who invented music. No historical evidence exists to tell us exactly who sang the first song, or whistled the first tune, or made the first rhythmic sounds that resembled what we know today as music. But researchers do know it happened thousands of years ago.
The oldest music recording available on Spotify is a French compilation album titled Anthologie De La Chanson Française, which has recordings dating between 1900 and 1920. Singers included on the compilation include Henri Fursy, Lucien Boyer, Ainé Mevisto, Gabriel Montoya, and more.