Breaking Records: 100 Years of Hits

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Chapter 1 The 1900s, The Birth of the Recording Industry
Chapter 2 The 1910s, Stage, Sheet Music, and Disc: A New Synergy
Chapter 3 The 1920s, The Jazz Age
Chapter 4 , The 1930s Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Chapter 5 War at Home, War Abroad
Chapter 6 The 1950s, All Shook Up
Chapter 7 The 1960s, The Rock Invation
Chapter 8 The 1970s, The Balkanization of Popular Music
Chapter 9 The 1980s, The Rise of the Music Video Star
Chapter 10 The 1990s, The Digital Revolution Begins

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This book is intended as a survey history of the American record business as it developed during its first full century. It already existed, just barely, when the century began, and by the start of the twenty-first century, whatever its troubles, it had become a very big business: 785 million albums in 2000 might not have represented much of an increase over the previous year, but it was still a lot of records. The story of the industry’s development is a financial and commercial one, concerning sales, competition, and economic forces, and it is also a musical one, concerning musicians and songwriters. The history of a country’s music is, to an extent, the history of the country itself, and much more could be said—indeed, much more has been said—about that than can be attempted here. But it is hoped that with this overview the reader will gain a certain perspective on that history and the way that the creation of an art form interacts with the machinery of its distribution—or has, thus far, anyway.

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