The Silence Was Deafening | Local 802 AFM
In 1877, Thomas Edison, while working on improvements to his other inventions – the telephone and telegraph – invented a means for both making and playing back sound recordings using tinfoil-coated cylinders and two needles. The creation of the modern phonograph and the phonograph player developed from these inventions. By the time America entered the World War II, it would be fair to say that most American families possessed both radios and record players in their homes to provide entertainment. While the phonograph recording was a remarkable invention, it had a negative consequence: it replaced live musicians. Like many other technological advancements that replaced live labor, organized musicians had a virulent reaction to this. Certainly, if their performance was being recorded, they should receive residual payments each and every time their recording was played. This sentiment was the catalyst for two of the most significant strikes in the history of the American Federation of Musicians and organized labor in general.
The outcome of these strikes has had a profound effect on the recording industry, recording technology and the creation of new styles of music. It even resulted in enactment of a section of the Taft Hartley Act that prohibited a union to cause an employer to remit to it anything of value for services that were not actually performed.
