Although Marconi technically invented radio (or “wireless telegraphy”) in 1901, radio as we know it was developed by David Sarnoff. Sarnoff was the young wireless-telegraph operator on duty when the Titanic sank in 1912, whose 70-hour shift that night earned him worldwide fame. He wrote an article shortly afterwards imagining that this “wireless world” could lead to appliances that would carry music into people’s homes. In 1920, Sarnoff’s celebrity status got him the top job at RCA, a new company set up by GE and other big corporations on the ashes of Marconi’s bankrupt “wireless telegraphy” business.
RCA’s mandate was to explore (and exploit) the commercial potential of the airwaves. Within a couple of years, as more and more stations began broadcasting music, radios became fairly popular consumer items, but they really took off when Sarnoff conceived of a national network made up of the best-liked shows aired on small stations around the country. (At this point, the whole idea of a national network was to sell radios, not to revolutionize communications or sell advertising.) Sarnoff’s ideas, combined with the huge capital his corporate backers put behind them, worked extremely well. In 1924, radios cost over $200 and were in a few thousand households; by 1927, some sold for a little as $35 and were in over 10 million households.
When radio began growing in 1921, early stations found that live musicians sounded much clearer over the air than record players did, so few if any played records. The record industry and musicians’ unions were still nervous enough to encourage US President Herbert Hoover to outlaw the playing of records on air, which he did in 1922. Hoover’s reasoning was that the public airwaves should be used for the public good, which included creating jobs for musicians.
However, the record industry still had serious fears that people would just sit at home listening to music for free without ever buying a record again. Cooler heads understood that radio couldn’t replace the experience of a live concert, and that music listeners would always want the option of choosing what songs they listened to.
However, the electrical microphones and speakers used by the radio industry sounded much better than hand-cranked phonographs did, and after peaking in 1921 when 110 million records were sold, record sales declined each year until 1925, when Victor unveiled a better-sounding “electrical process” records. Soon, all the other labels also put out new “electrical” records, helping North American sales climb to 140 million by 1927, and global sales to 200 million records by 1929.
The whole time, musicians were less nervous about radio than record companies were, thinking that stations across the country would have to hire musicians if they were to broadcast live all day and evening. However, as national networks quickly coalesced, there was lots of work for musicians living in a dozen or so bigger US cities but not much radio work anywhere else.
Ultimately, this may have been the beginning of a musical class system that exists to this day: for musicians who toured extensively or already had a big enough name, radio could spur them on to superstar status. Although the big performing stars in both pop and classical fields previously had agents and managers and so on to help line up gigs and tours, it was radio that first got mass-market-minded producers and programmers involved in the aspirations and fortunes of musicians and bands.
The first artists appearing on the national radio networks in the late 20s unsurprisingly played very safe, recognizable songs on their shows, in styles that weren’t exactly cutting-edge. Many of these, like bandleader George Olsen, already had reputations on vaudeville stages where they learned how to please audiences of average people anywhere.
The onset of the Great Depression combined with the ever-growing popularity of radios caused the near-total collapse of the record industry, falling from over 100 million units in the US in 1929 to just 6 million in 1932. On top of this, the increased competition from independents as well as radio through the 1920s had forced most labels to lower the price of their pop records from $1.00 to 50 cents before the collapse began. So, needless to say that the record industry was on the brink as 1929 progressed.
