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The Beatles Appear on the Ed Sullivan Show
In 1964 The Beatles first came to America they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS holding a then record 73 million people watched (Leopold, 2014). As mentioned in the Module 2 lectures, The Beatles appearing on this show was a big cultural event and marked the time of the British Invasion. It not only had a large impact on American culture with the wide success of British music, but it also proved by ratings the way Americans were consuming culture. -
First Issue of Rolling Stone Magazine Out
In 1967 the first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine came out with John Lennon on the cover. The magazine was devoted to music and its relation to pop culture. In contrast to other underground newspapers at the time, Rolling Stone had high journalistic standards while avoiding the radical politics of the time. This relates to my professional interests of becoming a music journalist as it set the standard as being one of the most important journals in popular culture as it still is today. -
Woodstock Music Festival
Woodstock Music Festival was another memorable event in media history. The festival lasted from August 15th to August 18th in 1969. It drew out an estimated 400,000 people who were mainly young for a festival of peace and music. Major networks like ABC, NBC, and CBS covered this major event. Academics and journalists have said that the way the media approached popular culture changed significantly throughout the coverage of the three-day festival (Shedden, 2014). -
MTV Airs Music Videos
MTV airs in 1981 creating a new era of music and influence on popular culture. This “music television revolution” had the ability to directly advertise to the youth (Englis, 1991). Therefore, it changed advertising and music. Music had never been so intertwined with television. Bringing music to cable television influenced the way music was being released. Typically before MTV, music videos had been used as a promotional tool to sell albums (Englis, 1991). -
Spotify Begins Music Streaming Platform
In 2008 Spotify became a music-streaming platform joining very few other companies in a different way of listening that would eventually make a huge impact. The goal of Spotify was to be “a fully licensed streaming-music service where you can find every record ever made,” (Seabrook, 2014). In 2014 the number of paying subscribers was predicted to reach forty million by the end of the decade. It also has reduced the amount of paid album sales because everything is available (Seabrook, 2014).
