Does the idea of having a hand in creating the music of a generation appeal to you? Would you like to find and nurture new musical talent? Would you listen to music all day if you could? Working in the recording industry can be an exciting career for those who love music. While the industry has seen its share of ups and downs in the last decade, it seems to have found its footing and is on an upswing, albeit a slow one.

Recording began with Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph, and Emile Berliner's Victrola a decade later made recorded music available. Improvements upon the machines and their devices evolved into records played on a gramophone, something featured in nearly every American household. In the later decades of the 20th century, record albums were eclipsed by cassette tapes, largely because of their portability, and eventually compact discs, which boasted superior sound. By the dawn of the 21st century many Americans were downloading digital sound files and listening to them on their iPods.

With advancement in technology came innovations in obtaining music. The days of going to your local record store to purchase the latest record have waned. Now that music was available digitally, hackers learned how to pirate it, or obtain it for free. An online service called Napster offered file-sharing of music, bypassing record labels entirely. Napster was quickly closed down, but pirating did not stop.

The recording industry entered a period of diminishing sales, in large part because so few people were actually paying for their music. In addition, executives seemed to resist the digital revolution, failing to change with the times. In 1999, growth halted altogether, and it would not be until 2012 that the recording industry would see an increase in sales, and it is only recently nearing the level of sales last seen in 2006: $12 billion in the United States. In 2019, total revenues were $11.1 billion, which was a 13 percent increase o...