These 'Program Transcription' discs, as Victor called them, played at 33 + 1⁄ 3 rpm and used a somewhat finer and more closely spaced groove than typical 78 rpm records. Victor's early introduction of a long-playing record was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, consumer playback equipment and consumer rejection during the Great Depression. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33 + 1⁄ 3 rpm and pressed on a 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc, with a duration of about ten minutes playing time per side. In September 1931, RCA Victor launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as 'Program-Transcription' records. The King Biscuit Flower Hour is a late example, as are Westwood One's The Beatle Years and Doctor Demento programs, which were sent to stations on LP at least through 1992. Unless the quantity required was very small, pressed discs were a more economical medium for distributing high-quality audio than tape, and CD mastering was, in the early years of that technology, very expensive, so the use of LP-format transcription discs continued into the 1990s. Soundtrack discs Neumann lathe with SX-74 cutting head Neumann latheīy mid-1931 all motion picture studios were recording on optical soundtracks, but sets of soundtrack discs, mastered by dubbing from the optical tracks and scaled down to 12 inches to cut costs, were made as late as 1936 for distribution to theaters still equipped with disc-only sound projectors. The system and playback system (still mostly wind-up phonographs) proved unreliable and was a commercial failure. Starting in 1926, the Edison Records company experimented with issuing Edison Disc Records in long play format of 24 minutes per side. History ĭespite some earlier experiments and attempts at commercial marketing, the Long Play format did not begin to enjoy commercial popularity until the early 1950s. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for about 22 minutes. The new product was a 12- or 10-inch (30 or 25 cm) fine-grooved disc made of PVC ('vinyl') and played with a smaller-tipped 'microgroove' stylus at a speed of 33 + 1⁄ 3 rpm. Format advantages Īt the time the LP was introduced, nearly all phonograph records for home use were made of an abrasive (and therefore noisy) shellac compound, employed a much larger groove, and played at approximately 78 revolutions per minute (rpm), limiting the playing time of a 12-inch diameter record to less than five minutes per side. By 1988, the latter format began to outsell LPs.īeginning in the late 2000s, the LP has experienced a resurgence in popularity. Beginning in the late 1970s, LP sales began to decline because of the increasing popularity of Compact Cassettes, then in the 1980s of compact discs. Apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound, it remained the standard format for record albums, during a period in popular music known as the album era. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire US record industry. The LP (from 'long playing' or 'long play') is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of 33 + 1⁄ 3 rpm a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter use of the 'microgroove' groove specification and a vinyl (a copolymer of vinyl chloride acetate) composition disk.

Originally 23 minutes per side, later increased by several minutes, much longer possible with very low signal level

Vinyl record pressing