by Jas Faulkner
The disturbing news about working conditions at the factory in China responsible for assembling IPads, Nooks and other handheld devices has inspired many people to rethink the eco-friendliness of their entertainment media storage. The human cost as well as the plastic-heavy composition of these devices is troubling and consumers, who are getting increasingly eco-savvy, want to do the right thing.
The file-based mercantile that could lead to decreasing the amount of plastic and paper used to create packaging for prerecorded music and movies would be good for the environment. The question remains: As technology continues to change at such a rapid pace; what are we going to do with the handheld gadgets that fall out of currency, sometimes within a year of their release? The answer has to be some variation of recycling. Just as recording and transmission technology have changed the way we purchase music, movies and now books, the technology that drives recycling is also undergoing improvements.
The evolution of music as a commodity reveals an industry where the product itself has skewed towards the heavier end of resource consumption. The concept of buying and selling music had its origins in the late nineteenth century. Traveling vaudeville shows and musicals which usually originated in New York and San Francisco featured songs that would gain popularity outside of the context of the source material. Recorded music was still a generation away and most households owned at least one musical instrument. The family sing-along was a common way to spend the evening hours. In response to this, publishers sent salesmen on the road. Many of these gentlemen were skilled musicians who demonstrated the sheet music they were offering.
The first (non-liturgical) mass produced sheet music was fairly plain, and often featured the music itself, the title, the names of the composers and occasionally the name of the show or a notation about the actors who originally performed the song. As time wore on and songs became more closely associated with theatrical personalities and shows, the sheets were sometimes bound in ornate covers that featured elegant graphic design (Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish and Toulouse Lautrec were just a few of the artists who kept wine and cheese on the table by doing commercial illustrations.) Off-set presses that stamped the sheets firmly enough to make the notes as readable by feel as by sight were replaced by the ornate beauty of lithographed sheets.
The invention of the gramophone in 1887 meant that the family who sang together was eventually replaced by the family that sat around the Victrola and cranked up everything from Enrico Caruso to Spike Jones. The original discs were heavy affairs. Constructed of metal and coated with a heavy, brittle plastic, they were meant to last forever. The sleeves of these early records were made of heavy pasteboard with the recording company’s logo stamped on one side. Sold door to door or in dry goods stores, they were sometimes packaged as a set in large binders of sleeves, from which comes the term “album” to signify a recorded disc of music.
Over time recording technology became even more refined and the devices used to play it became less cumbersome and appliance-like. The advent of commercial radio and small personal transistors contributed to musical tastes to becoming balkanised. Teens emerged as a new market for prerecorded music and with it, the concept of the teen idol. Elegant, understated covers gave way to splashy, colourful jackets for LPs and 45 RPM singles. The printing processes for these also changed. Offset printing on heavy rag and pasteboard gave way to slick, photographic productions, often printed in lead-based inks and coated with lacquers to encourage permanence.
The 1960s’ to 1970s’ are considered by many to be the golden age of LP cover art. Developments in playback technology also brought
about the rise of the audiophile, who wanted to enjoy his music free of the pops and skips that sometimes showed up after the second or third play of the now much thinner and far more fragile vinyl records. Prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes became popular for this niche market and with them came their own set of environmental concerns. The often cumbersome tapes required more delicate handling and a greater degree of mechanical dexterity than LPs. From an ecological standpoint, they were more costly than vinyl. They took quite a bit of non-renewable mylar and needed larger nesting lidded boxes for storage.
The desire for even more portability brought about the next generation of prerecorded tapes, first in the form of the plastic-heavy 8 track tape. The ecological advantage of the 8-track cassette was its self-contained nature. Little of the tape was exposed and the packaging was limited to an adhesive label displaying cover art and a track listing. Unfortunately the playback devices for the 8-track were difficult to use and tended to break down easily. They were eventually replaced by cassettes.
The rise of the audio cassette in the late seventies seemed like the perfect solution from a standpoint of eco-conscious consumption, portability and sound quality. Unlike earlier recorded music, cassettes could be erased and used again. The biggest drawback was that cassettes were often overpackaged, coming in plastic cases that were sometimes wrapped in paper sleeves.
The almost grail-like quest to find a media that was less fragile and subject of degradation of sound quality led to the next wave of technological change. Compact discs and the short-lived mini-discs were still very plastic-heavy. Relying on digital rather than analog sound reproduction, their primary appeal was the increased amount of data they could hold and their status as a solution to the fragility issue. However, serious music fans decried the coldness of the audio quality.
Resource consumption-wise, the compact disc, at least in the first ten years or so, was a nightmare. Retail outlets were often fitted with bins that were sized for the disappearing LP. To accommodate the retailers existing fixtures, CDs within their hinged cases were packaged in tall cardboard boxes that were constructed to be the same height and half the width of an LP. Artists made their concerns about the environmental impact of this known. In 1989, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt were among the musicians whose releases were packaged in “digipacks” that combined the cover art, booklet and nesting case in one unit as an answer to what they saw wasteful overconsumption.
The waning days of the twentieth century saw the advent of the internet. As computers became a common household feature and the internet replaced the mall as the marketplace of choice for new music, file sharing all but replaced the compact disc as the medium of choice for prerecorded music. The digital marketplace grew even stronger with the increase of low-cost devices available. Now the market has multiple industry giants competing for the attention and dollars of music consumers.
Are the days of a tangible product and complete ownership of prerecorded copies of music numbered? While it would seem to be the case, niche markets exist and show no sign of going away. Many specialty retailers such as Starbucks, Old Navy and American Apparel offer seasonal discs, often packaged in eco-friendly jackets that are printed with soy-based inks. Rhino/Rykodisc, Blue Note and Putumayo are among the leaders of very specialized catalogs that continue to produce a product that is very specific in its asthetic and appeal while continuing to seek ways to lessen the environmental impact of their manufacture. Consumers are also asserting the desire for handheld music that exists as more than a mere byte or two of DRM. Many if not all used media stores and thrift shops are dusting off their LP bins and selling vinyl albums again. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s a way to use up something that was seen as a disposable. To the people who watch our collective carbon footprint, the sound of all of those fans reusing resources that have been sitting in attics and garages for decades has to be music to their ears.
