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Hmmmm

I scanned through the Engineering thread and its obvious no one in programming was part of the discussion.

The primary reason music was pitched back in the day was to allow space to play an additional song an hour. If the songs you played were played faster they ended sooner. The idea was that listeners would be tricked into thinking you played more music. I've never seen any research to indicate whether it worked or not so I don't have an expert opinion to add on whether the practice was effective.

Today's studio automation systems do allow the ability to pitch but the sound is weird when you do it. I know that stations I've been at that used carts or CD's did pitching, once computers ruled the roost the practice seems to have all but stopped. I don't know of any stations in Tucson that pitch up anymore.
 
Actually, the reason to pitch music up "back in the day" was to make your competitor sound slow.

+2% is not enough to fit another song in each hour.
 
Buzz and Hotdog are both right, but it was a combination of things that led programmers to do the speed up bit. Sounding brighter was the usual excuse I heard. Putting more things, be they commercials or music in an hour was another. Invariably they discoverd that the pitch increase was a turn off for the audience. The latest hardware that seems to subsribe to the time compresion idea is designed to fill in the spaces, without increasing pitch. It's similar to the way delay units build up time when first turned on. A discriminating listener especially if they know the material can note and probably be agravated by what is happening. Such hardware and thinking comes and goes every few years. Those who fail to study history will make the same mistakes again and again.
 
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