records

Shameful...

The main competitors in the world record market, The Gramophone Company, and the Columbia Graphophone Company, originally hesitated to enter the Australian market and it took several years before they established record pressing plants in Australia. Whereas the Columbia Graphophone also ran a recording studio from the beginning, the Gramophone Company could not bring itself to operate recording facilities in Australia in order to produce local acts. The Great Depression forced the rivals to amalgamate into EMI also in Australia in 1931. The Gramophone Company The 1898 established British major record company, the Gramophone Company, sent an agent and 25,000 recordings as well as a large number of gramophones to Australia in February 1900 to establish a distribution branch under the direct control of the London parent company. Since the sales figures of the first two years in business did not meet the expectations, the retail business was closed down and sold with the remaining stock to the independent Sydney record retailer Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. in 1905. After World War I, the Australian government enforced a protective economic policy including high tariff barriers and trade restrictions. Thus, when the distribution agreement with Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. expired in 1925, the Gramophone Co. management decided to take the record business again into its own hands and established a gramophone and record plant in Sydney with a capacity of 150,000 records monthly. To cover the whole pacific market two companies were formed. An Australian firm with a production site in Sydney and a distribution branch for New Zealand held by the new Australian company. In mid of 1925, a general manager of the new Australian and New Zealand branches, William Manson, was sent to Sydney and on January 18, 1926, he could ceremonially open the new factory, which immediately started to press the “His Master’s Voice records and the budget ‘Zonophone’ label recordings. The firm’s internal correspondence reveals that the business ran well. The orders could only be met by additional shifts and supplementary shipping from London. Due to a rapidly growing population, the demand for recordings in Australia and New Zealand was far from saturated – in contrast to the stagnating European and U.S. markets. Source: musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-early-...

Gilsland not Gisland!

anthea lang Thanks for spotting that, Anthea - it's been corrected now.