1 Sept 1931 Jahr - RCA Victor LP Record

Beschreibung:

RCA Victor introduced an early version of a long-playing record for home use in September 1931. These "Program Transcription" discs, as Victor called them, played at 33+1⁄3 rpm and used a somewhat finer and more closely spaced groove than typical 78s. They were to be played with a special "Chromium Orange" chrome-plated steel needle. The 10-inch discs, mostly used for popular and light classical music, were normally pressed in shellac, but the 12-inch discs, mostly used for "serious" classical music, were normally pressed in Victor's new vinyl-based "Victrolac" compound, which provided a much quieter playing surface. These records could hold up to 15 minutes per side. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, was the first 12-inch recording issued. The New York Times wrote, "What we were not prepared for was the quality of reproduction...incomparably fuller."

Unfortunately for Victor, it was downhill from there. Many of the subsequent issues were not new recordings but simply dubs made from existing 78 rpm record sets. The dubs were audibly inferior to the original 78s. Two-speed turntables with the 33+1⁄3 rpm speed were included only on expensive high-end machines, which sold in very small numbers, and most people had little money to spend on groceries, let alone phonograph records in the depths of the Great Depression. Record sales in the US had dropped from a high of 105.6 million records sold in 1921 to 5.5 million in 1933 because of competition from radio and the effects of the Depression. Few if any new Program Transcriptions were recorded after 1933, and two-speed turntables soon disappeared from RCA Victor's phonographs. Except for a few recordings of background music for funeral parlors, the last of the issued titles had been purged from the Victor record catalog by the end of the decade. The failure of the new product left RCA Victor with a low opinion of the prospects for any sort of long-playing record, influencing product development decisions during the coming decade.

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