Music In The Market' by Don Cusic

Inside the book:

Great music always transcends the daily life of this world. But on American popular culture, the journey to an individual’s spirit, heart, and soul must go through the market. And it is music in the market that must be studied if music in the culture is to be understood.

The first commercial phonograph recordings were marketed in 1889 and that market grew steadily through the end of the nineteenth century. But it was Victor Records, which came out of Eldridge Johnson’s factory in Camden, New Jersey, that made the gramophone, using Emile Berliner’s technological development of the disc, and created the mass market for recordings. Between 1900 and 1910 the disc replaced the cylinder in sales (although the cylinder continued to be produced and marketed until the mid-1920s), while emergence of Enrico Caruso as the first international recording ‘star’ created a national demand for his product.
Victoria and Columbia continued to develop their machines and the mass market until World War I, which slowed down the recording industry for a few years as factory production shifted to wartime goods. The recording industry made huge gains during the 1920s – a period that corresponds to the institution of the mass market. It also corresponds to the development of radio, which played a major role in the United States becoming a mass market, linked by an entertainment medium.
With the rise of the mass market came the development of mass culture. The development of national entertainment mediums – radio and movies – created a popular culture dominated by popular entertainment geared to the mass market...