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.
Jolin Tsai
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Jolin Tsai is a Taiwanese singer, songwriter, dancer, actress and entrepreneur. Known for reinventing both her music and image, she is cited as a role of popularizing dance music as mainstream music in Greater China. Born and raised in Taiwan, Tsai began her career by winning the champion at an MTV singing competition at the age of 18. Her debut album, released in 1999 and titled 1019, was a huge success and her fifth album, Magic, is regarded as one of her biggest successes so far, right after her album, Dancing Diva, which reflected her mature artistic statement. After several successful albums and dozens of hits, she released her latest album, Play, having sold more than 25 million records in Asia, Tsai is recognized as one of the best-selling artists in Asia. Her work has earned her numerous awards and accolades, including six Golden Melody Awards, an MTV Asia Award and she has been acclaimed as an entrepreneur, particularly after she founded her own music production and management company Eternal in 2009. Forbes reported that she is one of the highest-paid Chinese celebrities, Tsai was born to parents Tsai Chu-chen and Huang Chun-mei in Hsinchuang, Taiwan, on September 15,1980. Her father is of Han Chinese descent, while her mother is half Han Chinese and her Papora maternal grandmother hails from Puli. Tsai was known for her grade, and frequently achieved top 3 in class since elementary school. Tsai was a 200-meter sprinter in school, but quit after she injured her ankle. Tsai later attended Hsinchuang Junior High School and Chingmei Girls High School where she and her friends formed a band Twister for which she sang, but the band quickly dissolved. In the second year of school, she made her performance debut on campus. In a different campus event, she sang Bette Midlers The Rose, in 1998, Tsai joined an MTV singing competition for a record of an extracurricular activity she performed in order to help her apply for colleges. However, she emerged champion at the competition where she sang a rendition of Whitney Houstons Greatest Love of All in the final round. It was a win that kickstarted her singing career and paved the way to her journey in becoming a teen idol. In 1999, she majored in English literature at Fu Jen Catholic University, after Tsai signed a recording deal with Universal, her debut single, Living with the World, was released in July 1999. She then started developing her album,1019, which was primarily recorded in Quad Studios in New York City. The album was released in September 1999, and she received positive feedback for the album, Tsai was named as the Teenage Boy Killer by media, and became an instant hit among teenagers in Taiwan
3.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
4.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
5.
Warner Music Group
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Warner Music Group is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. With a multibillion-dollar annual turnover, WMG employs in excess of 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world, the company owns and operates some of the largest and most successful record labels in the world, including its flagship labels Warner Bros. WMG also owns Warner/Chappell Music, one of the worlds largest music publishers, the film company had no record label division at the time and one of its contracted actors, Tab Hunter, scored a hit song for Dot Records, which was a division of rival Paramount Pictures. In order to prevent any repetition of its actors recording for rival companies, in 1963, Warner purchased Reprise Records, which had been founded by Frank Sinatra three years earlier so that he could have more creative control over his recordings. With the Reprise acquisition, Warner gained the services of Mo Ostin, the Canadian unit was opened in 1967 as Warner Reprise Canada Ltd, now called Warner Music Canada Co. After Warner Bros. was sold to Seven Arts Productions in 1967, it purchased Atlantic Records, founded in 1947 and WMGs oldest label and this acquisition brought Neil Young into the company fold, initially as a member of Buffalo Springfield. The Geffen catalogue, now owned by Universal Music Group, represents Youngs only major recordings not under WMG ownership, in 1969, two years after being purchased by Seven Arts, the Warner Bros. -Seven Arts company was sold to the Kinney National Company. Kinney combined the operations of all of its labels. An earlier attempt by Warner Bros. Records to create a distribution arm in 1958 didnt materialize. So in 1969, Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman approached Atlantics Jerry Wexler with the idea of setting up a joint distribution network for Warner, Elektra, an experimental branch was established in Southern California as a possible prototype for an expanded operation. Atlantic, its subsidiary Atco Records, and its affiliate Stax Records paved the way for Warners rise to industry prominence, the purchase brought in Atlantics lucrative back-catalogue, which included classic recordings by Ray Charles, the Drifters, the Coasters, and many more. But the sale led to Stax leaving the Atlantic fold because the new Warner owners insisted on keeping the rights to Stax recordings and it was soon apparent in 1969 that Atlantic/Atco president Ahmet Ertegün viewed Warner/Reprise president Mike Maitland as godlike. Maitland believed that, as vice-president in charge of the Warner Bros, in retrospect Ertegün clearly feared that Maitland would ultimately have more power than him and so he moved rapidly to secure his own position and remove Maitland. Following the takeover, Warners music group briefly adopted the umbrella name Kinney Music, erteguns campaign against Maitland began in earnest that summer. Atlantic had agreed to help Warner Bros. in its efforts to establish its labels overseas, Mike Maitland complained bitterly to Kinney executive Ted Ashley, but to no avail – by this time Ertegun was poised to make his move against Maitland. As he had with Hyman, Ertegun urged Steve Ross to extend Mo Ostin and Joe Smiths contracts, in response, Ertegun broadly hinted that Maitlands days were numbered and that he, Ertegun, was about to take over the recording division. Unlike the Warner/Reprise executives, Atlantics execs the Ertegun brothers and Wexler owned stock in Kinney, on Sunday January 25, Ted Ashley went to Maitlands house to tell him he had been dismissed, and Maitland declined the offer of a job at the movie studio. One week later, Mo Ostin was named as the new President of Warner Bros, Records, with Joe Smith as his Executive Vice-President
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
