Snappy Title

For my final project, I want to create a timeline/map that will show visually how our consumption of music and music media have changed over time. With the invention of so many different ways to distribute, listen to, and create music over the last century or so, I want to research this topic more and learn how we got where we are in the mass streaming era.

There is historical significance when we try to determine who the most popular artists and “biggest names” of all time are, and thinking about how musical tastes have shifted through the years. Music is a very important part of culture, and when music changes gradually, so does our culture.

Some historical sources I plan to use are lists of the most popular genres, songs, and artists during each year since musical popularity has been documented. I also plan to use online or text sources to compile a timeline for certain inventions that transformed music or were revolutionary in their time. These will range from synthesizers in the 60’s and 70’s, to the internet and computers for music in the 80’s and 90’s.

I am unsure precisely what I will need to carry out this project, but most likely a WordPress site or arcGIS site would suffice. I am mostly unfamiliar with the creation process of these sites, so some guidance from ITS will definitely be needed, but the bulk of this project will be the research itself.

I have already begun collecting sources and compiling lists of data I can use to draw conclusions for the final timeline. I am reading two books currently about the history of the relationship between music and both culture and technology.

1. The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles: How Music Has Shaped Civilization by Howard Goodall
2. Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century / Edition 1 by Hans-Joachim Braun

The challenges associated with this project will mainly come on the technical side, so I plan on spending ample time with ITS when creating the site itself. I have some, yet minimal, experience with programming and website creation from my time at Colby, but a project like this I cannot do without guidance through the more technical pieces.