Walter Haas/Ulrich Klever, Die Stimme seines Herrn - Eine Geschichte der Schallplatte, 1959 Frankfurt am Main

(the title translates to ‘His Master’s Voice - A History of The Record’)
(I have used the first part extensively in Music Caught and Saved and it has been my source for these pictures.)

This book, already wearing the signs of the times, has proved to be a fruitful source of insight into the early days of the music biz. Not that any of the accounts given in it can be trusted fully. The introduction says:

In the first section you will get to know audacious inventors and studious musicians, royal merchants and bourgeois cylinder factory owners; men with feature-length beards as well as some quite pretty misses in the front desk.
In the second section, then, some ambitous chansonettes and graceful primadonnas, unforgettable men with piano and violin, singing evangelist and fearless imitators of animal sounds.
…
We lead you through theaters and boudoirs, pubs and factories, huts and palaces, whereas everything is free to tour. To allow the truth, some words also have to be made about shady backrooms, vicious ludimagisters, impostors, patent thieves and - sadly - episodic drinkers. The insightful reader knows anyway that music gives off not just sweetness and light and harmonies and therefore can’t do without cacophonic side noises.
..
At the same time with the appearances of such prominent figures we communicate a comprehensive method, easily understood in the smallest amount of time, of penetrating the

Secret
Of The Black Disc

We shed light on the labyrinth of phonography and look bravely into the pharynx of the tube gramophone.

When I had gotten this far (page 9) I already loved the book.
It starts out with a lively description of Edison’s proceedings in inventing and making public of the phonograph, including the test of bishop Vincent of New York: This Bishop had his voice recorded while saying all the names of the prophets, and was convinced of Edison’s truthfulness when all the names were played back at him, because he believed there was nobody in the world who could say them as fast as he himself in a row. It tells about the unlucky frenchman Charles Cros, a friend of poet Paul Verlaine, who conceived of a similar mechanism, but was not able to pay the costs of filing for a patent. Edisons’s 10 point programme for the phonograph is documented, the early critics of the phonograph are quoted, lively descriptions of the sound quality are given. All without telling about the sources, of course.

The unforeseen and rather accidental development of the very early music industry - namely the industry of music boxes in public places - is described; not the goal, just the last resort for some people who tried to sell phonographs to the government as dictating machines, but failed miserably. Never before have I spent a thought on the times when each record had to be recorded separately, making the record itself unique when the sound recorded could already be played back. Musicians had to be much more like production-line workers, playing the same piece over and over again on days on end, and even more so, if it sold well… And I didn’t know about the early star of the cylinder Len Spencer, who had “the whole nation excited” with his interpretation of “The Last Speech of William McKinley”. Since most people had never seen or heard their former president in person, they believed it was a recording of himself giving that speech.

Through this book I have learned about the blonde epileptic secretary Ada Jones, singing her way into the hearts of fans even ten years after her death, the wars between cylinder and disc, the origin of well-designed labels in the predilection of the russian aristocracy and the personal resolution of one of the first big ‘copyright’ affairs:

Because intellectual property has never been taken as seriously in Russia as in other nations, people soon switched to dishonest business practices: Schaljapin-records were forged!

But this was not about copying the records, but about copying the labels and sticking them on records of other singers. Before the spread of the radio, who could tell the difference?

The pages 90ff feature “The Big Patent War”, still being fought between cylinder and disc, the former being advertised with the possibility of ‘home recording’ - a player could be used as a recording device as well, and it was possible to record directly on the wax cylinders - the latter insisting that “the gramophone has never discredited itself through amateurish recordings or bogus discs”. We’re still in the first decade of the 20th century when the - maybe - first DJ appears (the first german DJ?): Police lieutenant Schaefer, the owner of 5000 records, playing some three days before through leaflets anounced pieces of music to his neighbours. Through his window.

Later copyright problems are touched, again in a way tellingly different from today: The sound engineer of a german record company has to write down the sheets of an orchestra piece of Strauss, because his music publishing company wants more money than the company is willing to pay to reveal them for recording. Writing them down means getting a seat in the opera where the piece is performed the night before it shall be recorded, and listening really well! (With a little help from the piano score for said piece)

The pianola and other music automata have a guest appearance:

Those ‘automatic concerts’ [featuring pianolas and special record players, amplified with compressed air, called ‘auxetophone’] were very popular for some time and filled even big halls to the last seat. The german courts were crazy about such concerts for small audiences. The noblesse wished to show the people [holprig, vielleicht: seek to demonstrate to the common people] that it was keeping up with the time. But the most phono-firendly ruler was Mosaffar od-Din, shah of Persia, of the Kadshares. He had gotten himself a giant gramophone at the Paris world fair, which then had to be transported by camels from Batum to his harem in Teheran.

Tango is described as the first music style to cross big distances with the help of recording. The unsuitability of early recording technology for most instruments made acapella records the norm for some time, and “It was held as pleasure to accompany one’s own favourite artists”. Jazz was made popular by records, and record collecting by Jazz. The microphone is introduced, and the first records of sounds of “nature” are marketed with the slogan:

The voice of nature in one’s own home
Our recordings of bird’s voices seek to conjure the delightful air of spring into the house of the friend of nature with the wonderful songs of the best singers of forest and grassland. < [entflechten? zu viele of the]>

Another war is fought, this time between disc and radio, and one about royalties. The musicbox comes back as jukebox, and a two year strike of the musicians unions in the USA helps ‘Capitol’ get big fast. In 1958 58 mio records are produced in Germany, one per capita.

Every step of technical refinement is described as an adventure, and most company formations, merges and bankrupts as dramas. The first part of the 20th century appears as a mixture of detective novel and soap opera, all in the pursuit of high fidelity. What was actually recorded, or how good the music was, is less important than the question of who bribed/cheated on whom. It’s strange to see Germans write about this time as if, besides the quest for higher record sales, nothing happened. Record sales are, of course, the perfect measure of technical triumph, good music and the happiness of everybody. Or so it seems…

Today authors as well as record companies have modulated themselves out of the damped minor of the thirties. For them - knock on wood! - there is no more black friday. Their present is in major!