Sound Technology

However, neither the cultural nor the economic benefits of sound technology were unequivocal. From the Great War, the country’s international influence began to decline and it was forced into a defensive posture as America came to dominate both record and film industries. Although experiments with sound recording were taking place in the 1850s, the real history of the record industry begins in the mid-1890s with the marketing of Emile Berliner’sgramophone.16 Rapidly, the company set up in London to exploit the invention, the Gramophone Company and its US subsidiaries, developed catalogue of music and comedy recorded on 78 rpm discs. International competition then set in as other record companies sprang up in Europe and North America which adopted the technology, including the Society Latherers in France, initially involved in both cinema and recorded music. The international landscape of the record industry was transformed again in the1930s when the Depression, coupled with competition from radio (which foray time could reproduce live music better than the record could), created its first slump. Concentration began, producing four dominant international players, known today as majors: EMI in the UK (1931) and Decca (1929), RCA Victor (1929) and CBS (1939) in the USA. Struggling financially, record division was eliminated in the restructuring, bought out by EMI. By1939, then, the balance of artistic and economic influence had shifted in favored London and the USA. France’s absence from the world stage then became irreversible in the post-war period. Those already on the scene in 1950 were better placed to benefit from the next, massive phase of record industry growth and secure their positions for the second half-century.