The End of the Music Business

In 1902, Thomas Edison’s wax cylinder was finally sturdy enough to be sold in bulk, and Americans started buying recordings of music for the home phonograph. There was money to be made from this novel idea: Enrico Caruso’s rendition of “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci would sell a million copies by the end of 1903. Soon enough, the 78-rpm record, a brittle disc of lacquer with grooves on each side, became the standard. The technology seems primitive—a needle riding a groove without even a basic electric current—but it could be very loud. Ma Rainey recorded a string of important hits in the 1920s, and the Mother of the Blues still has the power to make a weak man change his cheating ways—especially if you hear her sermon blaring out of the old Victrola, its bent bell horn projecting ominously into the room.