NEW PRODUCTS: Plastic Music

With a loud roll on the drums, RCA-Victor last week put on the market its first non-breakable phonograph records. Made of a ruby-red, translucent vinyl resin plastic, they cost twice as much ($2 a record) as a 12-inch Victor Red Seal. Cried Victor: “The greatest improvement . . . in 45 years.”

But this improvement may also bring Victor its stiffest competition in 45 years. Decca, second biggest record seller, was waiting only to see how the first Victor album (Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks) sells before coming out with its own unbreakable product for home use. Already on the market was the more expensive ($2.50 a record) vinyl album, Prince Igor, put out by the six-year-old Asch Recording Studios. And manufacturers who never gave records a thought before were ready to move into Victor’s bailiwick.

Henry Reichhold, chairman of Detroit’s Reichhold Chemicals, Inc., world’s biggest synthetic resin maker, has developed an unbreakable plastic which he claims is cheaper than Victor’s. He has bought Cosmopolitan Records, Inc. (Cosmo), which is already producing 800,000 shellac records a month. After the first of the year, Reichhold expects to make 200,000 unbreakable records monthly—selling between 50¢ and 75¢ apiece. As president of the Detroit Symphony, he expects to give Victor a run for its money in classical as well as popular records.

Also in production in Detroit were Vogue recordings. Made of vinylite with an aluminum core, Vogue records are put out by smart, young (29) Tom Saffady, president of Detroit’s beanstalking Sav-way Co. (TIME, March 27, 1944). Vogue recordings will be chiefly of popular music and will be sold in such outlets as drugstores and motion-picture lobbies. As a sales tickler, Vogue records will have pictures of singers under the surface of the transparent plastic. Price: between 50¢ and 75¢ apiece.

But even unbreakable plastic may soon find itself dated. Reason: recording on magnetized wire, used extensively during the war, has now been developed to a point where it is commercially practical. A wire recording and playback machine which will sell for $300 will be put on the market by the Utah Radio Products Co. of Chicago by Dec. 1. The spool of wire is long enough (11,200 ft.) to play for 60 minutes. It will play the same recording an indefinite number of times, or the recording can be “erased” after one playing and another made. Handiest feature: a clock attachment which synchronizes radio and wire recorder. It will turn on both at a set time, record a radio program while the owner is away from home.