Hand Played Rolls, Smaller Firms and U.S. Copyright Law

Julian Dyer's excellent post in 120604 MMDigest re-introduced to my
mind a topic that, while I've corresponded about it privately with
a few collectors, I've seen little public commentary on.

What's on my mind this morning is U.S. copyright law, specifically
changes to the law made during the 1920s to expand copyright protection
to cover recordings, and what effect these changes had on the piano
roll industry.

Prior to the early 1920s, copyright only covered printed materials:
ink on paper, essentially.  Because recordings (of any type, phonograph
records, player rolls, etc.) did not fall under the heading of "ink on
paper" they did not fall under copyright protection.  With phonograph
records, the technology simply did not exist at the time to make
salable copies of commercially issued records.  With player rolls,
however, just the opposite was true: not only was it possible to make
"pirated" copies of commercially available rolls, it was, if not
ethical, also perfectly legal.

Not surprisingly, the practice was widespread.  Smaller firms could
"pad" their catalogs (or possibly even base them entirely) with rolls
from other firms.  It made economic sense, of course; instead of
maintaining a stable of talented arrangers tasked with the
time-consuming job of creating new and unique arrangements of pop
tunes, one relatively unskilled person could be tasked with the fairly
simple job of converting rolls purchased at retail outlets into masters
for perforation.

Perhaps one, part-time person with some musical skill might be employed
to alter the retail "masters" to mask what was going on, maybe by
adding "tremolo" or some other effect, or, more often, by repeating a
chorus (or removing one).  By reducing staffing (and therefore payroll)
requirements, smaller firms could not only churn out hit after hit, but
do so at prices that allowed them to undercut the very companies whose
rolls they were using as their masters.

Not surprisingly, the larger firms that were actually creating the
rolls to begin with, were not pleased.  For a time, though, the
practice was, as I said, perfectly legal, if not entirely ethical.
It became so widespread, and the problem so costly for the larger
firms, that political pressure was brought to bear, and the laws were
changed.  Under the new laws, the smaller firms could be and were taken
to court, and not only heavily fined but were also served with "Cease
and Desist" orders.  All this is a matter of historical record,
references to various aspects of it can be found in Music Trade Review
and elsewhere.

Something I am curious about, though, is what effect these changes to
copyright law had on the roll industry, and, by extension, the player
industry as a whole.  What effect did the removal of cheap, "pirated"
rolls from the marketplace have on the broader industry?

Rolls by QRS, Vocalstyle, Aeolian and the other major manufacturers
often retailed at between twice and four times the price of rolls by
many of the smaller firms.  What would the effect of the removal of
these "cut-rate" rolls from the marketplace have been, both to the roll
industry and to the broader player industry as a whole?  Could these
changes in copyright law, and resulting rise in the average cost per
roll, have contributed to or hastened the demise of the industry in the
late 1920s?

It's a question more for the economists among us than the historians,
and one I haven't yet seen addressed.

Bryan Cather
Saint Louis, Missouri