[Dixielandjazz] Record Company Screw-ups

[Stephen G Barbone]

 From Blended.com: (among their list of the 20 biggest record company  
screw=ups of all time) For more of the list see: www.blender.com/lists/61239/20biggestrecordcompanyscrewupsofalltime.html?p=4

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

#17 Thomas Edison disses jazz, industry standards
America’s most famous inventor, and the creator of the phonograph,  
also had his own record label: National Phonograph Company, later  
Edison Records. Naturally, it was the biggest one around at first but  
made two fatal errors. One was that Edison Records worked only on  
Edison’s players, while other manufacturers’ conformed to the industry  
standard and worked interchangeably. The other was that Edison let his  
personal taste govern Edison releases—and he hated jazz: “I always  
play jazz records backwards,” he sniffed. “They sound better that  
way.” So after releasing the world’s first jazz recording—Collins and  
Harlan’s “That Funny Jas Band From Dixieland”—the company spurned the  
craze in favor of waltzes and foxtrots. Edison Records folded in  
October 1929.

By the way, listmates, to hear what is called the first jazz band to  
record above, go to the below site and click on one of the various  
blue colored links:

http://www.archive.org/details/fjasband1916


#1 Major labels squash Napster
Shawn Fanning’s file-sharing service attracted tens of millions of  
users, but instead of trying to find a way to capitalize on it, the  
Recording Industry Association of America rejected Napster’s billion- 
dollar settlement offer and sued it out of existence in 2001.

Napster’s users didn’t just disappear. They scattered to hundreds of  
alternative systems—and new technology has stayed three steps ahead of  
the music business ever since. The labels’ campaign to stop their  
music from being acquired for free across the Internet has been like  
trying to cork a hurricane—upward of a billion files are swapped every  
month on peer-to-peer networks.

Since Napster closed, “there’s been no decline in the rate of online  
piracy,” says Eric Garland of media analysts BigChampagne, who logged  
users of son-of-Napster peer-to-peer networks more than doubling  
between 2002 and 2007. And that figure doubles again if you count  
BitTorrent.

And while it pretty much finished jazz on any label, I can't help but  
laugh at the suits at the majors, who should be flipping "burgs" for  
their sheer stupidity!