Milestones: 30 Years Ago In TIME

Today record companies are trying to stave off the threat from downloading. But back in 1973, when TIME ran a cover story on POP RECORDS, the industry saw only platinum skies:

Life, metaphysicians of the record industry will tell you, is a super-monster smash; dig it. It is performed in an illogical world that is both flat and round, where 33 1/3 r.p.m. exerts a fearful centrifugal force. The U.S., particularly that extensive tribe of its citizenry under 30, is electronically in thrall to the thrumming, incessant sound of music, a phenomenon that has handed the record business a supremely marketable...

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