Lesson 6

In 1877,

the American inventor Thomas Edison

produced the phonograph

The machine could record sound

for about four minutes

Later,

Emile Berliner invented the first flat disc record

This record was easy to mass-produce,

so it quickly became popular

In 1962,

a Dutch company developed a compact cassette with magnetic tape

Since it was compact and convenient,

the cassette became the mainstream medium for music

A portable cassette player

made by a Japanese company

was a big hit

Many young people took their players out with them

and enjoyed music around town

These two companies together developed the compact disc,or CD,

and began mass-production

in 1982

CDs store music as digital information,

so even if you listen to them 100 times,

you can still enjoy the original sound quality

From the late 1990s,

on the Internet

download services began to operate

You no longer need to go to a CD store

Moreover,

an epoch-making service has started

You can now listen to millions of songs

for a set fee

With a music subscription,

you can try types of music

that you have never heard before