We’ve already established that the record industry likes to blame new technology for its woes. In the 1930s, the culprit that nearly...

The rise of home studios and inexpensive digital equipment wrought yet another major change in the recording business. At my right elbow...

As of this writing, a good console could cost a million dollars or more. With the cost of the audio accessories not included on the...

Four-track recording became de rigueur around 1964. With each subsequent bump in technology, the process of making a record became both...

But as in Miller’s day, it was important that the artists came in prepared. Sessions for a recording were still a matter of hours rather...

Amusic industry expert and acclaimed author, Hank Bordowitz, shares his story about the role technology has played in music throughout...

This led Music Boulevard to start an experiment in 1997. It was aware of the collegiate using MP3 to exchange music files. Why not, the...

Fortunately, there are alternatives for those who cannot get to a record store besides Wal-Mart but don’t want the expurgated version of...

Indeed, the hearings and his high-profile wife brought Al Gore into the limelight, as well as 1984 presidential aspirant Ernest Holdings....

But the PTA’s resolution was relatively toothless – it really had no enforcement power and stopped short of calling for a boycott of all...

Specialty record stores – even the huge chains such as Tower, Trans World, or Musicland – pale in penetration when compared to Wal-Mart....

The same issues caused huge international record seller HMV to pull out of the U.S. market after five years. “In our case it was about...

Rather than making things easier, Universal’s Jump Start program made things even more difficult. To get a discount on CD prices,...

Like Sam Goody, Jack Eugster once sold tchotchkes, albeit as the head of a department store chain. Also like Goody, Russ Solomon started...

One of the methods the clubs used to recruit members – was to give away records as a premium, another practice that continues unabated....

One of the biggest problems the record business faces, besides letting people know that their product exists at all, is actually getting...

It bears repeating: in commercial radio the format is flypaper, and all of us are the flies. To extend the metaphor a bit, the format is...

Once again, the scourge of independent promotion became a watchword around the industry, the only way to get anything played. The indies...

And musically, what did the end of the Network era augur? Well consider the #1 records in 1985, the year before the Network hit the fan....

A couple friends of one music commentator promote records independently. They use their contacts and experience in specialised markets to...