1948: The year Columbia Records invented the first-ever album
It is hard to imagine a time when albums were an alien concept.
Given that the vast majority of people, certainly the people reading this article, have memories that do not stretch back far enough to a time before the 33⅓ rpm format, you would be forgiven for assuming that even Ludwig Van Beethoven released his work on 12” wax. In fact, it wasn’t until 1948 that albums were introduced to the market for the very first time.
One of the biggest factors in driving musical innovation has always been advancements in technology, particularly with regard to newly emerging music formats. Back in the 1960s, for example, the introduction of the compact cassette changed the way that an entire generation consumed music, as did the CD in 1982 and, of course, MP3 downloads towards the tail-end of the 1990s. More important than all of those advancements, though, was the introduction of vinyl records in the post-war period.
Phonograph records were already well-established by the time that Columbia Records issued the first 12-inch, 33⅓ rpm long-players back in 1948, but up until that point they had been limited to singular songs on delicate shellac discs or, going back further, wax cylinders. With the introduction of long-playing records, though, the possibilities for musical exploration were limitless – or, rather, not quite as limited as before.
With Columbia’s post-war innovation came a deluge of newly introduced LPs onto the musical market, largely made up of classical albums, a handful of popular records, and a selection of children’s novelty songs. Perhaps due to that limited starting line-up, though, LPs didn’t quite take over the musical landscape of the late 1940s. In fact, it wouldn’t be until decades later that the format really came into its own.
For much of the 1950s, in fact, the airwaves were still ruled by those archaic 78 rpm shellac discs, owing largely to the fact that most households already owned the means of playing those records, whereas the newly-introduced 45 and 33⅓ rpm discs required new hardware. Even when audiences began to modernise, though, it was the short-format 45 rpm singles that spurred on popular scenes like R&B, soul, and, of course, rock ‘n’ roll.
Albums were still being released throughout that time, of course, but labels weren’t yet tailoring their output to the long-form format, and so the majority of LPs continued to be performances of classical compositions or, in some cases, ‘greatest hits’ style compilations from the likes of Frank Sinatra or the Big Band jazz era.
Luckily, both for the future of the format and music more generally, the 1960s happened. Over the course of that illustrious decade, there was a definite shift from 45 rpm singles to 33⅓ rpm albums – spurred on by outfits like The Beatles crafting expansive full-album projects and the jam-centric counterculture era that followed, LPs suddenly found themselves the more coveted, mature, and sophisticated format within the rock and pop landscape.
In essence, that newfound reputation kept the album at the pinnacle of musical expression for decades. Even today, when music streaming is the prevailing method of music listening, the album format is still incredibly strong, even if it was considered a bit of a flop upon its first introduction back in 1948.
It is worth remembering, then, that without that technological advancement in the post-war era, the world would have been starved of some of its greatest artistic artefacts over the past century. Whether it’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Purple Rain, The Velvet Underground and Nico, or Nevermind, it all goes back to those fateful classical album releases during the late 1940s.
