"... The whole business used to be focused on the head of the sales curve, the handful of artists who were selling records in the millions of copies. ..."
Selling records, LP's (33rpm) only really took off after FM radio started playing up to 20 minutes segments of ad-free music, uninterrupted. Prior to FM, the single (45's) was king.
"President Kennedy got shot. It wasn't only the
president that got shot, 50's rock-n-roll died...
then they started playing mourning music... then
emerging out of the mourning music was FM radio...
because during those days it was singles, you were
selling singles. Nobody cared about LP's."
Link Wray [0],[1]
A combination of technology & societal disruption allowed records to sell.
[0] Link Wray, interview "Link Wray video interview-pt 3" starting at 4.00min. Exert from "Rumble Man" cf [1].
Comments
"... The whole business used to be focused on the head of the sales curve, the handful of artists who were selling records in the millions of copies. ..."
Selling records, LP's (33rpm) only really took off after FM radio started playing up to 20 minutes segments of ad-free music, uninterrupted. Prior to FM, the single (45's) was king.
A combination of technology & societal disruption allowed records to sell.[0] Link Wray, interview "Link Wray video interview-pt 3" starting at 4.00min. Exert from "Rumble Man" cf [1].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHdDE0ks3E&feature=relat...
[1] Link Wray, "Rumble Man"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1650853964354373174