1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
DualDisc
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It featured an audio layer intended to be compatible with CD players on one side and a standard DVD layer on the other. In this respect it was similar to, but distinct from, DualDiscs first appeared in the United States in March 2004 as part of a marketing test conducted by the same five record companies who developed the product. The test involved 13 titles being released to a number of retailers in the Boston, Massachusetts. The test marketing was seen as a success after 82% of respondents to a said that DualDiscs met or exceeded their expectations. In addition, 90% of respondents said that they would recommend DualDisc to a friend, however, sales plummeted over the next three years, particularly in competition with rival formats like SACD and DVD-A discs. DualDisc titles received a mass rollout to retailers throughout the United States in February 2005, the recording industry had nearly 200 DualDisc titles available by the end of 2005 and over 2,000,000 units had been sold by the middle of that year. DualDiscs were based on double-sided DVD technology such as DVD-10, DVD-14, DVDplus, though conceptually similar, used a thicker CD layer and thus is more likely to get stuck in a slot-loading player, DualDisc took the other course by thinning the CD layer. As a result, the reading the CD side might get a blurry picture of the data on the disc — the equivalent of a human reading a book with glasses of the wrong strength. Engineers tried to get around this by making the pits in the CD layer larger than on a conventional CD, the audio side of this disc does not conform to CD specifications and therefore not all DVD and CD players will play the audio side of this disc. The DVD side of a DualDisc completely conformed to the specifications set forth by the DVD Forum, some titles such as Devils & Dust by Bruce Springsteen and Straight Outta Lynwood by Weird Al Yankovic have been released in the United States on DualDisc only. In the US, the cost of a DualDisc at retail versus that of a conventional CD varied depending on the title but, on average, There were also other factors which go into the additional costs such as production, marketing etc. What one finds on the DVD side of a DualDisc title will vary, common content includes, The entire reprinted album in higher-quality stereophonic and/or surround sound. Documentaries Music videos The artists discography A link to the artists website There are sometimes film-and-soundtrack DualDiscs, the CD side of a DualDisc contained standard 16-bit LPCM audio sampled at 44.1 kHz. On the DVD side, most record companies provided the music in both high-resolution, 24-bit DVD-Audio and lower-resolution, 16-bit Dolby Digital sound. The sound was compatible with any DVD player, however, it does not provide the higher fidelity and resolution of 24-bit, in addition, several SonyBMG titles whose regular editions include copy protection programs did not feature the software on the DualDisc versions. The biggest competition to DualDisc was the hybrid Super Audio CD, which was developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, DualDiscs and hybrid SACDs were competing solutions to the problem of providing higher-resolution audio on a disc that can still be played on conventional CD players. Hybrid SACDs claim a higher compatibility rate with conventional CD players than DualDisc, however, a SACD or SACD-capable DVD player is required to take advantage of the enhanced SACD layer. With a DualDisc, consumers could use their existing DVD player to hear surround mixes, in 2005, it was estimated that 75% of households in the United States have at least one DVD player
3.
Rob Thomas (musician)
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Robert Kelly Rob Thomas is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the primary songwriter and lead singer of the band Matchbox Twenty. Thomas also records and performs as a solo artist with Lonely No More released in 2005 becoming his biggest solo chart success, Thomas earned three Grammy Awards for co-writing and singing on the Santana triple-platinum hit Smooth, on the album Supernatural in 1999. He has also lent his talents to such artists as Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Marc Anthony, Pat Green, Taylor Hicks, Travis Tritt. In 2004, the Songwriters Hall of Fame awarded Thomas its first Hal David Starlight Award and he was born Robert Kelly Thomas in Landstuhl, West Germany, at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, an army hospital, to his American parents on Valentines Day,1972. Thomass parents moved back to the U. S. when he was six months old and they divorced when Thomas was two years old. He and his sister were raised by his mother in Orlando, Florida, when he was 12, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. He attributes the song 3AM to this time and she later made a full recovery. He dropped out of Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs, Florida in the twelfth grade and he has since earned his GED. In 1990, Rob Thomas formed the band Tabithas Secret, which turned into the band Matchbox Twenty. Thomas was also featured on Santanas three-time Grammy award-winning 1999 smash hit Smooth, on April 19,2005, after ten years with Matchbox Twenty, Thomas began his solo career with the release of. Something to Be which shot to #1 on the album chart. His first single from the album, Lonely No More, reached number six on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, the single debuted in the top 10 of the Australian ARIA singles chart on the week of April 4,2005. The second single, This Is How a Heart Breaks, went gold in the USA, the third single, Ever the Same, became a top five Adult Contemporary hit. As a solo act, Thomas has made significant appearances. On July 2,2005, Thomas appeared at the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia, singing a solo set and he also appeared on the September 10,2005 MTV Katrina Relief Concert. On October 5,2005, he started his first solo tour, in the summer of 2006, Thomas toured with Jewel and Toby Lightman. In September 2006, Thomass solo effort received more exposure when ABC started using the song Streetcorner Symphony in promotional ads for its popular Thursday night lineup and this song was subsequently released as a single. In January 2007, Thomas released a single entitled Little Wonders from the soundtrack to the Disney animated feature, Little Wonders reached #5 on the Mediabase Hot Adult Contemporary chart. Thomas was featured on the June 14,2007 episode of the long-running PBS series Soundstage, in 2007, Thomas and his band Matchbox Twenty released another album entitled Exile on Mainstream
4.
Alternative rock
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Alternative rock is a genre of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s and 2000s. In this instance, the word refers to the genres distinction from mainstream rock music. The terms original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by their debt to either the musical style or simply the independent. Ethos of punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music, Alternative rock is a broad umbrella term consisting of music that differs greatly in terms of its sound, its social context, and its regional roots. Most of these subgenres had achieved minor mainstream notice and a few bands representing them, such as Hüsker Dü, with the breakthrough of Nirvana and the popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream and many alternative bands became successful. By the end of the decade, alternative rocks mainstream prominence declined due to a number of events that caused grunge and Britpop to fade, emo attracted attention in the larger alternative rock world, and the term was applied to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts. Post-punk revival artists such as Modest Mouse and The Killers had commercial success in the early, before the term alternative rock came into common usage around 1990, the sort of music to which it refers was known by a variety of terms. In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about, in 1979 Dallas radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled Rock and Roll Alternative. College rock was used in the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the radio circuit. In the United Kingdom, dozens of small do it yourself record labels emerged as a result of the punk subculture, according to the founder of one of these labels, Cherry Red, NME and Sounds magazines published charts based on small record stores called Alternative Charts. The first national chart based on distribution called the Indie Chart was published in January 1980, at the time, the term indie was used literally to describe independently distributed records. By 1985, indie had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, at first the term referred to intentionally non–mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave and high-energy dance anthems. The use of alternative gained further exposure due to the success of Lollapalooza, for which festival founder, in the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific. Defining music as alternative is often difficult because of two conflicting applications of the word, the name alternative rock essentially serves as an umbrella term for underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Alternative bands during the 1980s generally played in clubs, recorded for indie labels. Sounds range from the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the guitars of indie pop to the dirty guitars of grunge to the 1960s/1970s revivalism of Britpop. This approach to lyrics developed as a reflection of the social and economic strains in the United States and United Kingdom of the 1980s, by 1984, a majority of groups signed to independent record labels mined from a variety of rock and particularly 1960s rock influences. This represented a break from the futuristic, hyper-rational post-punk years
5.
Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American major record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. In 2004, Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group, craig Kallman is currently the chairman of Atlantic Records. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on December 14,2006, the brothers had become ardent fans of jazz and rhythm & blues music, amassing a collection of over 15,00078 RPM records. He convinced the family dentist, Dr Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and recruited Herb Abramson, Abramson had worked as a part-time A&R manager/producer for the jazz label National Records, signing Big Joe Turner and Billy Eckstine. He founded Jubilee Records in 1946, but had no interest in its most successful artists, so, in September 1947, he sold his share in Jubilee to his partner, Jerry Blaine, and invested $2500 in the new Atlantic label. When interviewed in 2009 she attributed her reputation to the companys chronic cash-flow shortage, most of the problems we had with artists were that they wanted advances, and that was very difficult for us. We were undercapitalized for a long time, the labels original office in the Ritz Hotel, Manhattan proved too expensive so they relocated to an $85 per month room in the Hotel Jefferson. In its early years Atlantic focused principally on modern jazz although it released some country and western and spoken word recordings. The union action forced Atlantic to use almost all its capital to cut and stockpile enough recordings to last through the ban, Ertegun and Abramson spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s scouring nightclubs in search of talent. Ertegun composed many songs under the alias A, in early 1949 a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun trying to obtain Stick McGhees Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, which was unavailable due to the closure of McGhees previous label. Ertegun knew Sticks younger brother Brownie McGhee, with whom Stick happened to be staying, so he contacted the McGhee brothers, Ertegun asked about artists royalties, which he paid, which surprised Columbia executives, who did not, which scuttled the deal. On the recommendation of broadcaster Willis Conover, Ertegun and Abramson went to see Ruth Brown at the Crystal Caverns club in Washington and she was badly injured in a car accident en route to New York but Atlantic supported her for nine months and then signed her. Her first release for the label So Long, cut at her second Atlantic session on May 25,1949 with the Eddie Condon band, was a major hit, reaching #6 on the R&B chart. Brown went on to more than eighty songs for the label, becoming the most prolific. So significant was Browns success to Atlantics fortunes that the label became known colloquially as The House That Ruth Built. The Clovers Dont You Know I Love You became the labels first R&B #1 in September 1951 and she hit #1 again in March–April 1952 with 5-10-15 Hours. After she left the label in 1961 Browns fortunes declined rapidly - within a few years was reduced to working as a cleaner and bus-driver to support her children. Brown eventually received a payment of $20,000 and founded a charity
6.
Record producer
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A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
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