Record industry

The record industry is the part of the music industry that earns profit by selling sound recordings of music. In the early years of the phonograph in the late 19th century, the music industry was dominated by the publishers of sheet music. With the start of the 20th century the importance of recorded sound grew, and at about the end of the first World War, records supplanted sheet music as the largest player in the music business. Since that time the music business has largely been dominated and controlled by the record industry, as the economics of mass-production of copies allow the manufacture of sound recordings for a tiny fraction of their sale price.