A Century of the Record Industry

From cylinders to streaming, the record industry turned performance into a repeatable, priced commodity.

Related

ModernContemporaryRecord LabelPiano

The question

The record industry does not sell sound but repeatable versions. A performance becomes a product, and listeners become a market. Once music is priced by disc, track or stream, what happens to the work, the performer and the audience?

Historical arc

After the phonograph appeared in 1877, cylinders and discs were first sold as office machines, then filled with music. Around 1900 record companies built studios and agencies, and singers such as Caruso became the first stars sold across continents. The LP of 1948 stretched a single into an album, and multitrack tape made the producer an author in the 1960s. CDs repackaged old catalogues in the 1990s, and downloads and streaming replaced ownership with access. Every format reshuffled the chain, and whoever holds the master holds the reissue.

Key cases

Maple Leaf Rag made sheet publishers and piano rolls early winners. Leoncavallo wrote Mattinata for Caruso almost as a recording advertisement. Gould's 1981 Goldberg Variations showed that one work could keep selling through rival recordings.

What to listen for

Hear whether Mattinata's phrases fit one disc side. Hear how Maple Leaf Rag repeats a strain for easy looping. Then hear the Goldberg aria and compare touch and editing.

Related

The industry crosses Modern and Contemporary. Its organisation is described under Record Label, and its earliest medium returns to the Piano.

Sources

• Pekka Gronow and Ilpo Saunio, An International History of the Recording Industry (Cassell) — chronology checked, not quoted
• Grove Music Online, entry "Record industry" — dates and terminology checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.