Phonolog or PhonoLog (full, older titles: PhonoLog: The All-in-One Record Catalog and PhonoLog: The All-in-One Record Reporter) was a recorded music directory that listed artists, currently available albums, and songs, focusing on popular music. Each directory contained thousands of loose-leaf pages and listings — 11,000 titles as of 1968. [1] These large directories with their familiar yellow-gold pages were often located in record stores and libraries; they were used by store customers, library patrons, radio music directors, radio DJs, and anyone else who needed a comprehensive resource of recorded music. A nearly complete volume (since 1949) is on file with the Library of Congress for historical songwriter, album, and title research.
PhonoLog filled a valuable reference niche by cross-referencing. For example: a record store clerk was able to help a customer looking for a particular song by searching the "Title" section for the song name, where the album title and artist were listed. Similarly, a customer looking for an album who could not remember the singer could easily be assisted. If the album was stocked in the store, it could easily be retrieved and sold. If not, the label information provided the store enough information to order either through their corporate system, through their preferred one-stop supplier, or even directly from the label. The latter was especially valuable for smaller indie labels with fanatic, nationwide fan bases in the 1980s and beyond, such as Dischord, SubPop, Lookout, Twin/Tone, and others that would not otherwise have had the means to market to such a diverse number of stores.
Musicologists, copyright licensing agents, and other business entities used the album and artist sections for song credit information and contact information for track licensing for film projects. Lawyers and business managers researched whether other recording artists were using the same name to avoid confusion and "cease and desist" orders, and to track copyright usage. Artists used the song title and album sections to monitor their copyright usage as well. Labels used the free listing service to reach a broader market, and to network with regional one-stops outside their area.
New releases traditionally arrived to stores on Tuesdays. Assisting stores to generate sales, by 1996 PhonoLog updates were accompanied by a "StreetDates" one-sheet publication highlighting the next 2 weeks of anticipated and under-the-radar releases, with short reviews and space for the store to stamp their logo/info.
Early "PhonoLog" editions included singles. By the 1980s, the catalog listings were full-length releases only due to the increasing volume of product available, particularly with the proliferation of independent ("indie") record labels that coincided with 4 factors: 1) Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos of home-based recording, 2) increasing availability of Cassette and later CD reproduction technology, 3) an industry-wide shift from album development to a singles-driven market leading to increasing frequency and volume of releases, and 4) increasing availability of digital media and file sharing capabilities.
PhonoLog was first published in 1948 in Los Angeles, and was maintained through periodic updates called the Phonolog Reporter. (Note original lowercase "L.") Phonolog Publishing Co. of Los Angeles was its publisher in the 1970s. Trade Services Publications of San Diego produced and distributed updates to the catalog until 1997, when the company division merged with NYC-based Muze, Inc. to develop interactive CD-ROM based kiosk products for record stores. (The companies had competing products for a brief period of time, until databases were merged.) Muze now offers a similar music database called MuzeMusic.
PhonoLog Reporter has largely been overtaken by CDs and the Internet. There is also a CD distributed by Billboard magazine with hundreds of thousands of entries.
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song released around the same time as the original in order to compete with it. Now, it refers to any subsequent version performed after the original.
The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. When it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels.
A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without gaining ownership. Customers pay either for each recording or on a subscription basis. Online music stores generally also offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. They typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts, and video files of movies.
AllOfMP3, MP3Sparks and MemphisMembers are brands of online music store that were operated by Mediaservices, Inc., a company founded in 2000 in Moscow, Russia. The stores formerly sold music encoded in standard, non-protected audio formats at a significantly lower cost than other online music stores. In 2008, the original AllOfMp3 site was replaced by a blog.
eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York City with an office in London, and is owned by TriPlay.
A CD single is a music single in the form of a compact disc (CD). Originally the CD single standard was a 8 cm (3-inch) "mini CD" (CD3); later on the term referred to any single recorded onto a CD of any size, particularly the 12 cm (5-inch) "full-size" disc (CD5). From a technical viewpoint a CD single is identical to any other audio CD. The format started gaining popularity in the early 1990s, but quickly declined in the early and mid 2000s, in favor of digital downloaded singles and CD albums.
Hear Music was a record label that was founded in 2007 in a partnership between Concord Music Group and Starbucks. Hear Music began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.
No Frills is a Canadian chain of discount supermarkets, owned by Loblaw Companies Limited, a subsidiary of George Weston Limited. There are over 200 franchise stores located in nine Canadian provinces.
Time Life, is an American company formerly known for its production company and direct marketer conglomerate known for selling books, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. The current focus of the group is music, video, and entertainment experiences as the Time Life book division closed in 2001. Its products have been sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales. Current operations are focused in the US and Canada with limited retail distribution overseas.
Rough Trade is a retail chain of record shops in the United Kingdom and the United States with headquarters in London.
Key Sounds Label is a Japanese independent record label formed in 2001 as a brand of the publishing company Visual Arts. Key Sounds Label was formed to catalog and release music related to visual novels produced by the brand Key, also under Visual Arts, known for developing titles such as Kanon and Air. Excluding two albums and one single that were released by Key and Visual Arts' before the label's formation, the majority of releases on the label all have a basis from one of Key's titles. There are other albums and singles on the label not directly related to the visual novels, such as two singles by Lia and one album by Riya. Unlike typical record labels, Key Sounds Label does not license any of the artists featured on albums and singles released on the label.
Deletion is a music industry term referring to the removal of a record or records from a label's official catalog, so that it is out of print. This is usually done when a title becomes unprofitable to manufacture, but it may also occur at a record artist's request.
PassAlong Networks, also known as Tennessee Pacific Group, LLC, was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin, Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs, two million of which were raw MP3 music files, and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl LPs of popular and classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line. Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents to $2.98. In the UK Pickwick Records' Top of the Pops record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Amazon Music is a music streaming platform and Digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the rise of digital media on the internet and computers as a central and primary means to record, distribute, store, and play music caused widespread economic changes in the music industry. The rise of digital media with high-speed internet access fundamentally changed the relationships between artists, record companies, promoters, retail music stores, the technology industry, and consumers. The rise of digital music consumption options contributed to several fundamental changes in consumption. One significant change in the music industry was the remarkable decline of conventional album sales on CD and vinyl. With the à la carte sales models increasing in popularity, consumers no longer downloaded entire albums but rather chose single songs.
Personics was the company that invented the music recording retail system with trade name "Personics System" that was introduced in record stores starting in 1987. The system allowed customers to enter a music store, use headphones to preview and select individual songs on a console, then specify a custom list of songs to be recorded to a Compact Cassette tape. The songs available were also listed in magazine format available at the stores. The record stores had a machine from Personics that contained 120 custom Compact discs recorded in CD Digital Audio Redbook format with custom Dolby AC1 (DP85) tracks which were also pre-encoded with Dolby B Type Noise reduction prior to compression. These two drives each had jukebox disc changing systems and provided access to thousands of songs for fast in-shell cassette recording.
Dusty Groove is a Chicago-based online record store specializing in new and vintage jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop, world, rare, collectible, and vinyl records and CDs.
Virgin Megastores was a retail chain that operated in the United Kingdom from 1971 to 2007. The company was established by Richard Branson, originally as a small record shop, and became a national chain. In 2007, the company was sold to management, and was rebranded as Zavvi. Zavvi entered administration in 2008 and subsequently closed.
A re-recording is a recording produced following a new performance of a work of music. This is most commonly, but not exclusively, by a popular artist or group. It differs from a reissue, which involves a second or subsequent release of a previously-recorded piece of music.