This publication is the first comprehensive contribution to mapping the history of the sound industry in the Czech lands or the Czechoslovak Republic. The publication provides data excerpted from the press of the period, publications and corporate catalogues, knowledge gained by examining physically-found gramophone records and other materials.
The collected materials relate to all of the record companies that imported gramophone records to Bohemia, Moravia, and to the Czechoslovak Republic after 1918. Alternatively, they also include records recorded in this area with the participation of Czech, Moravian and Slovak soloists and orchestras. The gramophone record distributors of the relevant brands, size and type of the recorded repertoire, as well as a list of prominent artists who recorded for the relevant company are specified for each record labelrepresented here. With a few exceptions, information was not systematically provided about recordings originating after 1946, when the recording industry in Czechoslovakia was nationalized and the national enterprise Gramofonove zavody was established.
The extensive illustrated appendix includes all known forms of gramophone record labels that included recordings with the participation of Czech and Slovak artists and orchestras, created both in the Czech lands and abroad. Each depicted label is accompanied by a brief legend stating the origin or the place and date of the recording.