He also said the molded brown wax records may have been sold to Sears for them to sell instead, maybe under Sears' "Oxford" name for Columbia's products. Columbia started selling disc records and phonographs in addition to its cylinder system starting in It took the place of the "Toy Graphophone" from which used small vertically cut records.
For the next 10 years, Columbia competed with its rivals, the Edison Phonograph Company cylinder company and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc record company. It was a selling war between the top three names in American music at the time. Columbia called a number of New York Metropolitan Opera singers to make music to be sold be the label starting in , so they could respect its line of artists more, which included Marcella Sembrich, Lillian Nordica, Antonio Scotti and Edouard de Reszke.
They also introduced the inside-horn "Grafonola" to compete with the extremely popular "Victrola" sold by Victor. During this time, Columbia used the "Magic Notes" logo, which was a pair of sixteenth notes semiquavers in a circle—both in the United States and worldwide, where this particular logo would never substantially change.
Columbia stopped making wax cylinder records in in order to to start selling celluloid cylinder records that were made by the Indestructible Record Company of Albany, New York; they were sold as "Columbia Indestructible Records". In July , Columbia decided to concentrate only on disc records, and stopped making and selling cylinder phonographs; they still kept selling Columbia Indestructible Records for a year or two.
Columbia was then split into two companies: one that would make the records, and one that would make the record players. Columbia's phonograph company's headquarters were moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it, with said company eventually being renamed the Dictaphone Corporation.
In late , Columbia started being held by a receiver. The company was also bought by its division based in England, named the the Columbia Graphophone Company, in The label design, record numbering system and recording process were also changed. On February 25, , Columbia began recording music with its new electric recording procedure that they had been given permission to perform on from Western Electric.
The new "Viva-tonal" records set a new standard in tone and clarity, which was unique on commercial discs during the 78 RPM era. The first electrical recordings were made by Art Gillham aka the "Whispering Pianist".
In a secret agreement with Victor, the new recording technology was kept a secret for some months, in order not to hurt sales of their existing acoustically recorded catalog, while a new list of electrically recorded music was being put together. In , Columbia acquired Okeh Records and its growing line of jazz and blues artists, including Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams. Columbia had already built an impressive line of blues and jazz artists itself, which included Bessie Smith , in their highly successful D Race series.
Columbia also had a very successful "Hillbilly" series D. In , Paul Whiteman , the nation's most popular orchestra leader, left Victor to record for Columbia. That same year, Columbia executive Frank Buckley Walker pioneered some of the first country music or "hillbilly" genre recordings, with the Johnson City sessions in Tennessee , including artists such as Clarence Horton Greene and the legendary fiddler and entertainer "Fiddlin'" Charlie Bowman.
He followed that up with a return to Tennessee the next year, as well as recording sessions in other cities in the South. Columbia kept using acoustic recording for "budget label" pop records well into , on the labels Harmony, Velvet Tone both all-purpose labels and Diva sold exclusively at W.
Grant stores. Columbia issued about eight of these in the D series, as well as a short-lived series of double-grooved "Longer Playing Record"s on its Harmony, Clarion and Velvet Tone labels. All of these experiments were discontinued by mid The response from the public confirmed the legitimacy of club membership and direct-mail marketing as an effective means of selling music.
By the end of , the Columbia Record Club boasted , members who purchased , records. The quick success of the marketing experiment forced management at CBS and Columbia Records to treat the division more seriously. Initially, when executives were testing the waters of selling to customers directly through the mail, the fulfillment operations of the division were housed in Manhattan in part of a building on Fifth Avenue.
The public's embrace of the record club concept rendered the New York City facility obsolete by Columbia Record Club's second year in existence. To provide sufficient space for the warehouse and shipping functions of the division, a sprawling distribution center, staffed with more than employees, was established in Terre Haute, Indiana, in The Terre Haute facility, the principal physical presence of an enterprise that lacked, in many consumers' minds, any physical dimension, served as the hub of operations throughout the 20th century.
The city was chosen for its access to railways--of vital importance to a mail-order company at the time--and, equally important, because Columbia Records manufactured its vinyl discs in Terre Haute. The synergy achieved in Terre Haute established a pattern, later leading to the establishment of distribution centers near Columbia Records' other manufacturing facilities in Connecticut and California. Within a decade of its formation, Columbia Record Club changed the profile of the retail music industry.
A new dimension to the business of selling music emerged, a new way of placing music in the listener's hands that was created in large part by the advances made by Columbia Record Club. By , two years after starting out, Columbia Record Club was using its Terre Haute facility to ship seven million records to its members, the ranks of which were swelling by the month. The club's success in signing new members was underpinned by its ability to tap into the growth of the industry it served.
The music industry was expanding substantially during the latter half of the s, its growth fueled by the emergence of a new genre, rock 'n' roll, and, to a lesser extent, by technological advances in the recording of music and the equipment used to listen to music.
Columbia Record Club rode the wave of the popularity, introducing rock 'n' roll records, listed under the less controversial "Teen Hits" category, in The following year, the Columbia Records division began offering its members stereophonic records and it offered a small assortment of stereo equipment to help spark interest in the new format. Columbia Record Club stood as a recognizable force in the U. By , the division accounted for 10 percent of all the money spent on recorded music, achieving market share that forced traditional retailers to take notice.
The club managed to capture a sizable portion of the market by offering a broad selection of music whose range would only be matched by the massive, national retail chains that emerged decades later.
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