The Shortest History of Music

A brief history of the world’s most popular art form

Music is not only widely discussed but also the most readily available form of art known to mankind. At just the click of a button, one can now listen to any song of any genre – even from the last century! But it wasn’t always this way.

In this brisk, breakneck journey across millennia, award-winning musician and broadcaster Andrew Ford paints a glorious picture to show what really draws us to this sonic art form and how it has evolved. He traces the inventions and reinventions that have contributed to the popularity and accessibility of modern music; early oral forms; the invention of notations; the first recording technology and record companies, and explores how the multibillion-dollar industry we know today came to be.