Deck 4: Sound Recording and Popular Music

Question 1

A key factor in the success of the MP3 format is its ability to send or receive music without having to compress sound.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Blues music originated in the urban taverns of Southern California.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Until the invention of digital recording, records were made using an analog recording process.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

The popularity of the jukebox caused record sales to drop sharply in the 1930s.

Question 5

Music in the cloud eliminates the physical ownership of music.

Question 6

The music industry----especially major labels----ultimately embraced the MP3 format by supporting services like iTunes.

Question 7

The music industry has successfully hindered peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, which enable free music file-sharing.

Question 8

Thomas Edison initially expected his new phonograph to be used as a kind of telephone answering machine.

Question 9

One advantage of polyvinyl records over shellac records is that they were less likely to break.

Question 10

A war among vinyl recording disk formats in the late 1940s and early 1950s resulted in the
45-rpm record format being used exclusively for the release of album music collections.

Question 11

Sometimes called the first integrationist music, rock and roll blurred all sorts of cultural, class, and geographic boundaries.

Question 12

Edison's early cylinder recordings were made out of durable vinyl.

Question 13

Audiotape was developed by the Japanese after World War II.

Question 14

Compact discs hit the market in the early 1980s, and by 2000 their sales were still lagging way behind the albums and cassette tapes most people were familiar with.

Question 15

Competition from TV in the 1950s helped the radio and recording industries become allies.

Question 16

Thomas Edison made his first sound recordings on a cylinder wrapped in tinfoil.

Question 17

''Home dubbing'' caused the commercial sale of record albums to grow in the 1970s.

Question 18

In the 1920s, many radio stations went off the air because they couldn't afford to pay for the rights to broadcast recorded music.

Question 19

The word phonograph comes from the Latin words phone and graph, which put together mean ''recorded speaking.''

Question 20

Unlike Edison's phonograph, Emile Berliner's gramophone played flat disks.

Question 21

Oligopoly is the term for a situation in which a few firms control most of an industry; film studios and record labels are examples.

Question 22

In the late 1950s, singers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis stopped performing rock and roll because they believed it was the ''devil's music.''

Question 23

White supremacist groups did not consider rock and roll a threat to white culture because white artists like Elvis Presley played it.

Question 24

The record industry groomed singers Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard as replacements for rebellious rock and rollers like Frankie Avalon and Ricky Nelson.

Question 25

Universal Music Group controls nearly 20 percent of the U.S. market share of the recording industry.

Question 26

Because they are smaller, independent record companies are reluctant to invest in commercially unproven artists.

Question 27

Payola is the practice of record promoters paying deejays to play certain songs on the air.

Question 28

Cleveland deejay Alan Freed helped popularize black music with white audiences.

Question 29

Most of the money earned from the sale of a CD goes to the royalties paid to the artist.

Question 30

TV host Ed Sullivan promoted the career of the Beatles, but he considered the Rolling Stones
''bad boys.''

Question 31

Gangsta rap developed in the 1980s partly to tell the truth about gang violence in American culture.

Question 32

Independent labels produce only about 2 percent of all recordings.

Question 33

British rock-and-roll groups such as the Beatles drew much of their inspiration from black artists.

Question 34

In the 1950s, it was common practice for white artists to cover songs first recorded by black performers.

Question 35

Punk rock emerged in the 1970s partly to protest the commercialism of the recording industry.

Question 36

Folk is considered the sound of social activism.

Question 37

Grunge music became a significant form of rock and roll in 1992 as a result of a breakthrough album by Nirvana.

Question 38

Motown music groups had a more stylized, softer sound than the funk music of James Brown and Wilson Pickett.

Question 39

The Rolling Stones emphasized hard rhythms and vocals in their music, while the Beatles stressed melody.

Question 40

The first congressional hearings on radio payola started closely after the quiz-show scandals in television.

Question 41

A major difference between sound recordings made by Emile Berliner and those made by Thomas Edison was that .

A) Berliner's disks were flat
B) Edison's disks could be mass produced
C) Edison's disks were coated with lamp black
D) Berliner's disks were made of vinyl
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 42

The biggest seller of recorded music in the United States is .

A) BMG Music Service
B) Best Buy
C) Walmart
D) Target
E) iTunes

Question 43

Songwriters and publishers receive a mechanical royalty each time a recording of one of their copyrighted songs is sold.

Question 44

Which of the following are ways the music industry tries to fight the illegal downloading of music?

A) It has asked P2P sites like Grokster and Kazaa to pay them a monthly fee.
B) It has embraced ways for consumers to pay for legal downloading of music.
C) It has convinced several major Internet service providers to help identify customers who may be illegally downloading music.
D) Both B (embraced legal downloading) and C (convinced Internet service providers to identify illegal downloaders) are correct.
E) Both A (asked P2P sites to pay a monthly fee) and B (embraced legal downloading) are

Question 45

Little Richard became the first African American artist to chart higher with his own song than a white cover artist because .

A) he cleaned up the music and lyrics so white audiences wouldn't be offended
B) he pretended to be white
C) nobody cared about race anymore
D) he wrote and performed a song with lyrics and a style that white artists like Pat Boone couldn't imitate
E) he made a deal with white cover artists so they would respect his creative efforts

Question 46

Recording artists receive about one-third of the retail price of a CD in royalties.

Question 47

Radio stations pay a licensing fee to broadcast copyrighted music.

Question 48

Magnetic audiotape and tape players first caught on in the .

A) 1950s
B) 1940s
C) 1910s
D) 1890s
E) 1960s

Question 49

Unsigned music artists can now build online communities of fans around their personal Web sites, drawing attention to their music.

Question 50

Emile Berliner's invention of was significant because it allowed for mass reproduction of sound recordings and for labeling, which enabled the development of a star system.

A) wax cylinders
B) lamp black
C) flat disks
D) audiotape
E) 331/3 rpm records

Question 51

What might be an example of ''music in the cloud''?

A) Music services available on long airplane flights
B) Downloading music to your computer or portable music player like an iPod
C) Music you hear on the radio
D) An online music service that lets you listen to music without physically owning the songs
E) Music that has been illegally downloaded

Question 52

Which of the following does not fall into the category of pop music?

A) Rock
B) Country
C) Classical
D) Hip-hop
E) Blues

Question 53

Which of the following is true about the MP3 music file format?

A) It creates music files that are very large and slow to download.
B) It was very important in the fight against the pirating of recorded music.
C) It makes recording, transferring, and downloading music quicker and easier.
D) It hasn't been popular with consumers because MP3 players break easily.
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 54

In the mid-1950s and early 1960s, Pat Boone was ranked as .

A) the king of pop
B) the king of cover music
C) the king of rock and roll
D) the king of swing
E) the king of pain

Question 55

The turning point that led to the end of major record labels employing white performers to cover black rock-and-roll artists' songs occurred with which event?

A) Ray Charles had a No. 1 hit covering a country song in 1962.
B) The Marvellettes scored a No. 1 hit with ''Please Mr. Postman'' in 1961.
C) Little Richard had a hit, ''Tutti-Frutti,'' in 1956.
D) Lauryn Hill covered Frankie Valli's old tune ''Can't Take My Eyes Off of You'' in

Question 56

Which of the following boundaries did rock and roll not blur in the 1950s?

A) The country and the city
B) Sacred and secular
C) Masculinity and femininity
D) North and South
E) Old and young

Question 57

The advance money that a recording artist receives from his or her music label is ultimately a loan, and the artist is responsible for reimbursing the label for recording expenses, music video costs, and other charges before receiving any additional royalties made on sales.

Question 58

Many musicians who receive advances from record companies don't earn enough from sales to pay them back.

Question 59

Under the compromise reached by CBS and RCA in 1953, the standard for record singles became the format.

A) 331/3-rpm
B) 45-rpm
C) 78-rpm
D) CD
E) MP3

Question 60

Which of the following musical genres was at one time banned?

A) Hip-hop music
B) Waltz music
C) Rock music
D) Gangsta rap
E) All of the options are correct.

Question 61

The term refers to the economic situation in which a few firms dominate an industry.

A) monopoly
B) corporate scaling economies
C) oligarchy
D) limited competition
E) oligopoly

Question 62

In the 1950s, disc jockey Alan Freed attempted to make rock-and-roll music more acceptable to mainstream audiences by .

A) playing original rhythm-and-blues music and black versions of early rock and roll
B) playing rhythm-and-blues songs as they were covered by white musicians
C) developing formatted stations that targeted specific audiences with specific types of music
D) developing payola practices that guaranteed the inclusion of particular songs on mainstream music stations
E) having white musicians cover sacred gospel songs for mainstream audiences

Question 63

The album that broke grunge music into the American mainstream was .

A) Nevermind by Nirvana
B) Thug Life by Tupac Shakur
C) Ten by Pearl Jam
D) Never Mind the Bollocks by The Sex Pistols
E) Dookie by Green Day

Question 64

Which statement best describes the uneasiness between the commercial and artistic sides of the music business?

A) Record labels only want cookie-cutter artists, but recording artists don't want to
B) An artist who criticizes commercial culture might need to sign with a major label and become part of that culture in order to reach a larger audience.
C) Record labels rely on the Internet to promote artists, but recording artists feel that this practice is too commercial.
D) Artists want to set their own prices, but record labels are unwilling to allow artists too
E) All of the options are correct.

Question 65

Which of the following statements accurately represents how independent musicians use the Internet?

A) The Internet is a big obstacle for new musicians because they lose money on illegal song downloads.
B) The Internet doesn't really have much impact on new or independent musicians.
C) The Internet provides an inexpensive way for new artists to create a fan base using social networking sites.
D) No musicians have been able to use the Internet to launch a mainstream music career.
E) The Internet is the only way for independent musicians to launch a mainstream music

Question 66

The success of British groups in America in the 1960s led to .

A) the verification that the performers themselves could write and produce popular music well
B) the German Invasion led by artists like the Scorpions
C) the acceptance of later British artists like Amy Winehouse and Radiohead
D) the sale of American popular music recordings in Europe
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 67

Which of the following large corporations is not one of the major firms controlling national and international music distribution today?

A) RCA
B) Sony Music Entertainment
C) Warner Music Group
D) Universal Music Group
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 68

Folk music .

A) is mostly acoustic music that is historically popular with authority figures
B) is a genre with a rich history of protest lyrics and a focus on social and political issues
C) used electric guitars and loud drum solos to establish its distinctive sound
D) was at the heart of the payola scandals of the 1950s
E) has its roots as music composed and written down by so-called ''Tin Pan Alley''

Question 69

An A&R (artist & repertoire) agent typically .

A) makes decisions about the final sound of a recording
B) listens to demo tapes and scouts talent for record labels
C) chooses studio recording equipment and manages audio technicians
D) makes distribution arrangements with major retailers
E) All of the options are correct.

Question 70

Which of the following statements about the music industry and the Internet since the year 2000 is true?

A) Musicians and music companies are afraid to use the Internet to market new music.
B) No one will spend money for music if they can download it for free.
C) Artists who use the Internet to generate a fan base can improve their chances of being signed by a major label.
D) No musicians have experimented with bypassing record labels and selling their music directly on the Internet.
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 71

Sugarhill Gang's 1979 hit ''Rapper's Delight'' .

A) became the first No. 1 hip-hop album on the popular charts
B) infused hip-hop with a political take on ghetto life
C) sampled part of another song, a practice common to hip-hop
D) was part of the subgenre known as gangster rap
E) was covered more successfully by white artists

Question 72

Senate hearings on the music industry in the 1980s led to _.

A) lower prices for music
B) higher royalty rates for artists
C) monopolistic control of the music industry
D) music advisory labels
E) the legalization of payola

Question 73

In economic terms, the recording industry is best described as .

A) a monopoly
B) a big, friendly, family business
C) an oligopoly
D) alternative-music heaven
E) cluttered with indie record labels

Question 74

Which of the following is not one of the ways record companies, composers, and recording artists make their money?

A) The direct sale of CDs and digital downloads at retail stores
B) Charging fees to radio stations that play their music
C) The illegal sharing of songs via computer files
D) Selling albums and songs on sites like iTunes and Amazon
E) All of the options are correct.

Question 75

Which of the following statements about hip-hop music is true?

A) It is a broad description of music and culture that includes rapping, sampling/cutting, and deejays.
B) It provides a way for artists to debate issues of gender, race, class, violence, and drugs.
C) It has been criticized for lyrics that degrade women and glorify violence.
D) Some of its most popular artists include Lupe Fiasco and Jay-Z.
E) All of the options are correct.

Question 76

Conservative social forces in the late 1950s pointed to Jerry Lee Lewis as an example of .

A) the new clean-cut musicians who were promoted by Dick Clark
B) a rock and roller who was considered to be ''white trash''
C) how musicians could be corrupted by payola
D) how a young man from the South could realize the American Dream
E) how black musicians were inciting riots

Question 77

Which of the following is the correct chronological order (oldest to newest) in which musical genres first became popular?

A) Hip-hop, rock, punk, jazz, grunge
B) Jazz, punk, hip-hop, rock, grunge
C) Punk, jazz, grunge, hip-hop, rock
D) Jazz, rock, punk, hip-hop, grunge
E) Grunge, hip-hop, punk, rock, jazz

Question 78

Which of the following is not an example of the Web sites that are increasingly popular places for fans to sample and discover new music?

A) Google
B) iTunes
C) Facebook
D) YouTube
E) Rhapsody

Question 79

Which of the following statements is true about the attempts to rein in popular music?

A) Most attempts happened in the 1950s and 1960s.
B) Concerns over lyrics in the mid-1980s had no effect on the music industry.
C) Before rock-and-roll music, there were no clashes between older and younger generations over music.
D) Gangsta rap was embraced by middle-class white adults as an excellent way for their children to learn about inner-city life.
E) None of the above options is correct.

Question 80

Which statement best describes the relationship between small independent music labels and the huge major music labels?

A) Each survives only by trying to put the other out of business.
B) They never cooperate to distribute music.
C) Major labels rely on resourceful independents to discover new talent and trends.
D) Independents distribute only mainstream music while the majors cover niche markets and discover new talent.
E) There are no independent labels left because they've all been purchased or run out of