Radio diffusion

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Broadcasting's effect on musical circulation: after records made music portable, radio made it simultaneous and free at the point of listening. KDKA in Pittsburgh, licensed on 27 October 1920 and broadcasting the presidential election returns on 2 November, is conventionally counted the first commercially licensed American station; between the returns it played music from a phonograph into the microphone, which is a fair summary of what the medium did next. By 1922 there were more than five hundred American stations. The consequence for this Journey is a change in who could hear what. A listener in a rural county with no record shop, no touring circuit and no Black neighbours could now hear a blues singer; a listener in West Africa or the Caribbean could hear an American band; and the boundaries that the record industry had drawn between catalogues turned out to be much harder to police over the air than in a shop. Radio did not create the traditions in this Journey. It removed the requirement that a listener be near one in order to learn it.

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