We’ve come a long way baby: the evolution of listening

Check this out. It’s an image comparing the advancement of music technology to human evolution. Tweeted out by live music video site OurVinyl, the image covers everything from the early days of vinyl and boomboxes, through to the Sony Walkman, the birth of Napster and the iPod, and finally the emergence of streaming music services such as Pandora and Spotify.

Like the iconic “March of Progress” image on which it is based, it’s flawed without proper context. Multiple technologies co-exist at the same time for instance, and there are evolutionary dead-ends that these kinds of images can’t account for. One thing we’re happy to see it got right however is the resurgence of vinyl (thanks largely to the perception that analogue recordings produce a more “authentic” sound than their digital counterparts).