How Old Was The Music Industry In The 1940s

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1943 Vinyl becomes medium of choice Necessity is the mother of invention and Vinyl Records were actually discovered as a result of limited manufacturing supplies during World War II. Supplies of the original manufacturing material, shellac, were extremely limited. A significant factor was that vinyl was cheaper and more widely available, consequently records were pressed in vinyl instead of shellac for distribution to U.S. troops. 1960s The Music Industry Starts to Mature These industry advancements fell into place during the 1960s when Elvis Presley in the US, Cliff Richard and then The Beatles in the UK all capitalized on them. Elvis was the first and ultimate in the “musician-focused/international audience/delivered through record …show more content…

Only in 1964 did the cassette has its commercial breakthrough. This was the year that Philips introduced the 30-minute format for the tape cartridge and allowed other manufacturers to duplicate it. Philips’ collaboration with other manufacturers to standardize the cassette tapes created a new market for a portable and inexpensive alternative to reel-to-reel tape. The price of a blank tape was around $3 and a vinyl album about $6 by the end of the 1960s. This started the record companies worrying about the recordable cassette affecting their …show more content…

Congress passed the 1971 Sound Recording Amendment to the 1909 Copyright Statute thus declaring sound recordings worthy of copyright protection. Even though this amendment was driven mostly because of the record industry's complaints of vinyl piracy, by implication, the amendment was applied to the growing recordable cassette market. This brought new complaints from record executives that teenagers were taping and swapping their favorite albums. Consequently, they advocate a tax on blank cassettes to make up for the lost revenue from the new practice of tape trading. Music sales were still growing so the objections to taping were mostly