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|title=Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry

|author=Gareth Murphy

|publisher=Serpent's Tail

|date=January 2014

|summary=An engrossing history of the music industry from the invention of the first sound recording machines in the 1850s to today's digital streams, and many of the entrepreneurs and talent scouts who discovered the major musical names and launched the record labels that made them household names

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According to Murphy, the saga begins with Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter. Inspired by reading a physics manuscript to make what was the world’s first sound-recording device, he was granted a patent in 1857. Soon after that came Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner and a parade of others - not forgetting Nipper the fox terrier, immortalised in the His Master’s Voice logo. The humble wax cylinder was succeeded by the easily mass-produced shellac gramophone record, which became a booming industry in the 1920s, until the collapse of the stock market in 1929. Within three years, the once-lucrative business had almost collapsed in America and Britain. But thanks to a little luck and a few solitary individuals who were prepared to take chances, it recovered and went from strength to strength.

I found this a fascinating read. Murphy has written an almost immaculate account of the rollercoaster that is the industry, and how the recording industry developed from its beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century. It will surely be an eye-opener for anybody who has ever purchased one of its artefacts, whether on a seven-inch single, a CD or a download, and wondered how and where the whole process started. That surely includes nearly all of us.

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