HOW MUSIC IS MURDERED

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 6

HOW MUSIC IS MURDERED

The radio is charged with, killing the lovely art of music.” At the same time the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers contend that the mechanisation of music has compelled the composer to write inferior music, has reduced interest in the study of music to a minimum, and has almost abolished professional opportunity in this art. Yet by the increase in the radio audience from 16,000,000 in 1925 to 60,000,000 in 1930 the popularity of music is enormous'. The radio audience grows while the sale of pianos, phonographs, records, sheet music, and the composer’s remuneration steadily decreases. In the society’s recently issued brochure on ‘ The Murder of Music ’ it is declared that people “ listen in to any one of several hundred broadcasting stations that repetitiously and endlessly din into the ears of listeners old music and new music, good music and poor music.” Musicians out of work are accounted for by the fact that mechanisation has reduced the musicians employed in the theatre from 19,000 in 1925 to 3,000 in 1932. A song hit used to last sixteen months and sell 1,156,000 copies; now the radio stations play a hit to the point of exasperation and it dies in three months. *