Humans have been making music for thousands of years. Scientists have found animal bone flutes that were carved by early humans 60,000 years ago! But it wasn’t until 1877 that music could be recorded and played back with Thomas Edison’s invention called a phonograph. This device played music using rotating cylinders etched with tiny bumps.
Each cylinder of the phonograph could play only one song. But later music players—like record players in the 1930s and CD players in the 1980s—could play multiple songs again and again. In 2001, MP3 players first allowed users to play music digitally. People could download libraries of hundreds of songs and play them all from the same device.
Nowadays most people listen to music through streaming apps that have millions of songs to choose from. The line plot on the right shows typical monthly subscription fees for music streaming apps in 2022.