Thomas Edison thought his phonograph would be used to cut sound recordings that could then be mailed to others, effectively making letters one could listen to. Many of the original phonograph cylinder machines had shavers that allowed people to reuse the discs. The idea lives on today in the form of voice mail.

At around the same time, people were thinking up ways to use the telephone to transmit music. One idea was the Telharmonium, a 200-ton electric organ located in a concert hall in New York City, with enormous tone wheels that produced loud sounds that could be used to recreate symphonies. In effect, Brunton said, it was the first synthesizer, and the service was an early example of music streaming.

The idea behind the Telharmonium was that people would subscribe to a service that would allow them to call a number and listen to Telharmonium music being played live. Users would hook up a horn to the phone to listen, and the music was piped into restaurants in lieu of live bands. 

"It seems bizarre to us now to think of telephones for music, and records for voice, but it makes sense culturally if you are still thinking of music as a live phenomenon, and think of letters as the fundamental means by which you engage in distant communications with people," Brunton said.