The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I ran across this Gram-o-phone original ad , thought it was interesting, claiming that wax records were inferior and possibly fraudulent which explains why Berliners records were signed, perhaps fraudulent recordings were a big problem back then?

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing it.

tictalk wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 9:27 pm perhaps fraudulent recordings were a big problem back then?

Apparently it was a huge problem. And it wasn't just smaller companies doing it.
I don't recall offhand who was pressing who's records, but I think perhaps Columbia at one stage pressed pirated records, or maybe it was their record's being pirated?
There may have been some trouble between Berliner and Zonophone too??
I think a lot of went on in Germany when they had the major pressing plants there.
They could easily press someone else's records and apply a different label then ship them off around the world.

I do know American Russell Hunting was guilty of pirating (who was a recording engineer and artist for Victor/G&T and Columbia).
When he left his Sterling cylinder record company in England and went to work for Pathé in France, he stole a bunch of cylinder masters which he pressed on Pathé discs, so there are some Pathé discs that are announced as Sterling records.
This prompted several famous artists, like Peter Dawson, to run newspapers ads stating that they'd never made recordings for Pathé, and such records were pirated copies.

It was not until the Copyright Act of 1911 that recorded music was protected from piracy in the UK.
Then as now, legislation failed to keep up with new technology.