Watching technology develop, albeit glacially, throughout my life has been spellbinding. During the halcyon days of my youth, an anthropomorphic hedgehog collecting rings was the pinnacle of video gaming. And while Sonic is still as viable an IP as it was in the 90s, kids today are far more stimulated by immersive first-person shooters than the digital exploits of adorable mascots.
Similar to the growth video games experienced, the music industry has undergone several wild shifts related to its hardware. I'm old enough to remember the transition from tape cassettes to CDs. At one point, when I was behind a successful CD burning business during middle school, I couldn't fathom music transitioning away from the compact disc. Then the iPod came out a month later and put me out of a lucrative side hustle.
In the video embedded above, a program from 1982 walks viewers through a brief history of music players as they build up to the "new" compact disc.
