Music Vendor & Cash Box Mazines

Music Vendor used to be a top tier music industry trade magazine. It existed for only 18 years under that name and then became Record World. It began as Music Guild, which was first published on a steno machine in 1946.  Radio trade magazines have lost a lot of ground since then to online industry websites. The site digitalmusicnews.com has a solid Page Rank of 5, for example. But there are a few that hang on in print.

Record World was one of the three main music industry trade magazines, the other two being Billboard and Cash Box. Music Vendor was founded in 1946. Contemporary sources usually referred to Cash Box as "struggling." In reality Music Vendor and Billboard used up all the air in the room. It was a duopoly, Cashbox was the third wheel in those early years. But in the end, Cashbox continued on until 1996. Cashbox was revived as an Internet-only magazine in 2006. Music Vendor re-branded as "Record World" in 1964 and ceased publication completely in 1982. What went wrong?

Cashbox was focused on venues connected to coin-operated machines, jukebox operators primarily. Data from jukebox play was core to early music charts. The recording and collating of that data is where all music charts originate, and by connection the Top 40 format, top 10 count downs etc. By comparison, Billboard was and is pretty stodgy. They are very pop focused and have essentially no ear to the street. Billboard breaks no stories, no bands, and never discovers any new genres, movements or artists. They're retail-focused. Music Vendor by comparison was actually kind of hip. But it was Cash Box who actually innovated the "bulleted" chart indicating the movers on a top 100 chart. Their chart page was actually perforated so it could be easily removed and displayed. That was invented (probably) by Marty Ostrow. 

What preserved Cashbox and Music Vendor is that their advertising rates were lower than Billboard. So they had ad traffic from Independent labels that couldn't afford Billboard. That's how black artists like fats Domino and Brook Benton ended up on the cover. Billboard was still swooning over Pat Boone. Staff moved between Cash Box and Music Vendor often. Sid Parnes, who later was part owner of Record World, was a music editor at Cash Box starting in 1951. Parnes left in 1959 to start his own music form Sidmore Music. He and Bob Austin, another Cash Box alum took over Music Vendor in 1964 and changes the name to Record World.

They made it work for anther 20 years. But as 8-track and cassette sales rose and LP sales fell, personal grievances between Austin and Parnes strained the operation. It didn't collapse, it fizzled. But in early 2013 Bruce Elrod, formerly of Cash Box as well, re-launched Record World with a new mission to serve solely indie artists and labels. How appropriate.

Damn you Bill Gavin!

My major complaint of radio is it's increasingly homogeneous content. Brands are trademarked and xeroxed coast to coast, programs are syndicated, playlists centralized and tightened, DJs are voice-tracked and sat-cast. I have examined the history of radio and I have arbitrarily selected a precipice and a guilty party.Bill Gavin was in San Francisco when he took the Billboard list of the top 30 selling records and turned it into a radio show at KNBC. Then he started writing to DJs across the country and asking them to send him their top 10 lists. Many complied. Radio stations reached out to Bill and asked him to consult for them with this "top 10" data. KYA went for it as did KCBQ in San Diego. This collated list became known as the Bill Gavin Record report. For anyone that actually enjoyed regional diversity this was the beginning of the end.

Before the Gavin report the most important sources for information on hits were juke boxes and Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Bill took those concepts and went big and homogeneous. His sheet was serviced weekly by mail. Bill was looking at it as a radio programmer. His tip sheet was to improve listenership by playing the right music. There were other charts out there, Bill's were just better.His tip sheet was not like the trade magazines like Billboard Magazine and George Albert's Cash Box.

Cash Box had been running since 1942 and collated jukebox play. It was focused on vending machine owners. Billboard was much older, starting in 1894 but was initially marketed to the bill posting industry. It branched out into media as they were billboard buyers. Only in 1961 did they re-focus on the record industry. Their first music chart launched in 1940, Btu it mixed sales AND airplay. Bill got into programming with the playlist for the show Lucky Lager Dance Time. In 1941 Lucky Lager sponsored their teen-targeted program on KFAC. It was very similar to the Lucky Strike Hit Parade running since 1935. But Bill had a hand up on the competition. Bill had a Top 1o countdown. Lucky Strike just followed the Billboard Chart. Bill didn't want to ape Billboard.

The program was carried on 48 West Coast stations. What made the program odd was that it was scripted out of 1330 KFAC-AM but then hosted locally by announcers on the local stations. Bill was known to critique local hosts if he felt they weren't right for the program. It was carried by KMOD, KGO, KSEI, KTRB, KGW, KPOI,KVOA, KSFO. Bills tip sheet begot the end of local programming and the rapid expansion of both Top 40 radio, and radio consultants. In 1945 KFAC dropped the program to go all-classical but Bill wasn't ready to let go. His tip-sheet grew into a trade magazine.

Bill Gavin died in 1985 at the age of 77. His eponymous trade rag floundered in the late 90s as radio chains like Infinity and Clear Channel refused to participate in their conference and made their own centralized playlists. In February of 2002 it's British parent corporation pulled the plug. Lucky Lager is still bottled today and is at least available regionally on the West coast.