Music History Timeline

This quiz builds a timeline of music history. The events span one thousand years, from the invention of the musical staff to the first billion dollar tour. The board starts with one event already on it. The quiz then gives you one event at a time.

You put each event in the timeline, before or after the events that are already there. A correct placement shows the year and keeps the event on the board. One wrong placement ends the run. You cannot move an event after you place it, so each choice is final.

The ends are easy. The middle is not. Most people can put the first jazz record after Beethoven. Far fewer are sure if the Walkman comes before or after Thriller, or the first Grammy Awards before or after Elvis at Sun Studio.

How to play

• The timeline is sorted by year. The oldest event is at one end and the newest event is at the other end.
• One event starts on the board. Its year is shown.
• The quiz gives you one event at a time. Put it in the gap where you think it belongs.
• A correct placement shows the year of the event. The event stays on the board and the quiz gives you the next event.
• A wrong placement ends the run. The quiz then shows you the correct gap.
• You cannot move an event after you place it.
• Your score is the number of events on the board at the end. The maximum score is 25.
• A perfect run places all 25 events with no mistake.

What counts in this quiz

• 25 events from music history: premieres, inventions, festivals, records and record formats.
• Each event is dated by the year the card names — the premiere, the release, the launch or the broadcast.
• The events are far enough apart that the order is not in doubt. The smallest gap in the quiz is 3 years.

What's not included — and why

• The oldest date is an estimate that historians still discuss. Guido of Arezzo's staff is dated about 1025, the figure most reference works give.
• Events without a clear single year are not in the quiz. "The birth of hip hop" has no one date, so it is not a card.
• The quiz dates Thriller by its release in 1982, not by its sales records, which came later.

Good to know

• Beethoven was almost fully deaf at the premiere of the Ninth Symphony. A singer turned him around so he could see the applause he could not hear.
• Edison's phonograph of 1877 was the first machine that could record a sound and play it back.
• Nirvana's Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the US album chart in January 1992.
• The Eras Tour passed one billion dollars in December 2023 — no tour had ever crossed that line.