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Technological developments (c. 1955):

• transistor radio
  • portable music source
• synthesizer
  • at this time, however, much too large to be portable
• tape recorder
  • musique concréte

Typical relationship of artist to record company in the mid-50s...

"... It was a buyer's market--a fact not lost on record company executives, who depended on the kids' [e.g., artists like Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers] utter lack of business savvy to help them make a profit. In a typical deal of the time, a group of youngsters signed a contract that gave them a penny per record sold, with no royalties paid until the full cost of the recording session was recouped. All the songs written by the group were assigned to a publishing company owned by the record label, and the label head got half the writer's credit, although he didn't contribute a line. Obviously the record company would be the only winner in such a deal--unless the group wised up, as the Penguins did, declaring the contract invalid because they had been minors when they signed it. But such rebellions were infrequent, since the prestige of releasing a record, for many of these groups, outweighed the benefits of their meager royalties."

--from Ward, Stoker, & Tucker (pp. 127-128)

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