The Historical & Cultural Influence of the Record Industry in Singapore, 1903–75

By Ross Laird

During most of the 20th century, Singapore was one of the most active and significant locations in Southeast Asia in which the newly emerging global record industry was based. But despite the decades of activity and the enormous economic and cultural importance of this industry, very little evidence of how it had operated survives today. This paper is a first attempt to study this subject and is based on contemporary sources.

By first attempt I mean that there are currently few existing studies of the record industry in Southeast Asia – not a single book and only two journal articles comprise the entire literature to date¹, and second, none of the two studies which does exist (by Pekka Gronow or Tan Sooi Beng) examines the record industry from a Singapore perspective or looks at the industry in the broader historical context in terms of the cultural and economic conditions in Singapore during the years in question. Neither study looks at events beyond 1942.

It is tempting to begin with the earliest recordings made in Singapore by Fred Gaisberg in 1903. However, in order to fully appreciate the significance of this event, it is desirable to look at earlier developments to provide context.

The earliest demonstration of the phonograph in Singapore was on 31 October 1879.² This event closely followed the original patent application by Thomas Edison which was granted on 19 February 1878. In May 1892, the improved phonograph (which was the model for the first commercially available machines) was demonstrated in Singapore by Professor Douglas Archibald³ who had obtained the latest model directly from Edison in 1890 and taken it to Australia where he gave lectures and demonstrations over the next two years. In early 1892, Archibald sailed from Perth, Australia, on a world tour, during which Singapore was the first stop.⁴ This early phonograph (which played wax cylinder records) was already being advertised in Singapore by Robinson & Co. in 18925. The gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner (and which played disc records), was sold in Singapore by John Little & Co. Ltd. in 1899.⁶

These pre-1903 developments are significant as they demonstrate that, far from being a remote colonial outpost, Singapore, even in the late 19th century, was open to all the latest scientific developments which made possible the development of a global record industry in the coming decades.

This very openness, along with its efficient port and an ideal geographic location, meant that Singapore was well placed to function as a logistical and administrative centre for any industry which wanted to access the region. Since the record industry was not a cultural enterprise, but very much a business, it was vitally interested in access to markets, as well as convenient recording locations. Singapore suited both functions (suggest requirements) perfectly.

The significance of Gaisberg making the first recordings in Singapore in May 1903 was not only in the historic importance of those recordings, but also in the way his recording expedition made use of Singapore as a gateway to the region.

Unlike the earlier events described above, such as the first demonstration of the phonograph in Singapore in 1879, there are no contemporary accounts published in Singapore newspapers of Gaisberg’s visits in 1902–03. This is an indication that while the other events were of general public interest and reported accordingly, the Gaisberg recording sessions were of a different nature. They were the private operations of a global business enterprise, conducted with the intention of making a profit, and were not considered newsworthy despite the fact that in hindsight we see them as an important historic event.

Despite the lack of contemporary press reports, the details of Gaisberg’s first recording expedition to Asia are known from his diaries.⁷ To maximise the benefits of the expedition, everything was carefully planned. It was decided that after leaving India (where Gaisberg had already made several hundred recordings) he would travel to the farthest point in Asia (which was Japan) where he intended to record, and then work his way back. This meant that although Gaisberg initially reached Singapore on 28 December 1902, he made no recordings at that time and left for Japan the next day.

What is interesting about this approach is that on this very first recording expedition to Asia Gaisberg had already established logistical procedures that were to become a model of how the record industry would operate in the region over the next several decades.

One important principle to note is that Singapore was obviously seen as a vital staging post. First the expedition called at Singapore on the way to Japan, and once Gainsberg returned in May 1903 and made recordings, immediately afterwards he left for Batavia (Jakarta today) where further (suggest additional) recordings were made. Next he returned to Singapore, from where he left for Bangkok in June 1903, then back to Singapore from where he left for Rangoon and further (suggest more) recordings. This demonstrates that Singapore was essential as a key location from which other potential markets were accessed.

A second principle is that when first in Singapore Gaisberg would have consulted the record company’s local agents about arranging for suitable artistes to be available for recording when the expedition returned. It became standard practice that the local agent of a record company would arrange for the artistes to be recorded to be available in Singapore when the recording engineers and equipment were available, and he also worked with them to select suitable repertoire in advance. Artistes would frequently travel from their home cities in Malaya or Java to Singapore for this purpose.⁸

This method of arranging recordings continued to be used up until the 1950s. The planning would take place over several months so that when the recording engineer arrived a lot of recordings could be made in a relatively short time.

In those days there were no permanent recording studios in Asia. Such places existed only in the main centres of the record industry such as New York or London. In smaller or more remote locations such as Singapore, a hall or rooms in a hotel were normally rented for a few days or weeks for recording purposes as such facilities would not be needed again until the next visit (which was usually only once a year at most) of the recording engineer.

The earliest known published account of a Singapore recording session9 in 1912 refers to a “temporary recording department”, and the earliest known report in a Singapore newspaper of a local recording session¹⁰ in 1929 notes that “On Sunday two rooms in the Clubhouse of the Y.M.C.A. at the back of the Sailors Institute were utilised by the Columbia Gramophone Co., the local agents for whom are Messrs. Robinson Piano Co. Ltd., as a studio for recording...”

The type of recordings that were made also remained little changed until the 1960s. The first recordings in 1903 were Malay songs, and very soon after Chinese opera and dialect songs were also being recorded. The record companies operated on the principal that they did not record material in one location which could easily be made in another location with a higher standard of performance. This meant that in Singapore the most highly sought performers were those singing material unique to Southeast Asia, and English language songs (for example) were hardly ever recorded until the 1960s since the companies could import high standard English language performances by famous artistes from Britain, Europe or America for those who wanted such records, rather than record what were generally considered second-rate performances by local amateur artistes.

However, there were exceptions to this general rule. Record companies were primarily interested in marketing their products, so if there was reason to believe that a local demand existed, no matter how small, a company might be willing to make recordings to satisfy that demand. For example, the first known English language records made in Singapore were recorded in 1932 for the Singapore Musical Society.¹¹

The records (made at the Victoria Memorial Hall) were by the Singapore Cathedral Choir and Mr. E.A. Brown.¹² Presumably the members of the society were a large enough group to constitute a market for those recordings.

Another exceptional case was a group of English language records made for educational purposes in 1936. These recordings were of local school students reading English texts and as they were promoted in the Singapore Teachers’ Association journal¹³ it was probably felt that this group was a worthwhile market. Otherwise, the vast majority of the recordings made in Singapore over the years (from 1903 up until the early 1960s) were Malay or Chinese songs.

The Gramophone Company was not only the first to make recordings in Singapore in 1903, it dominated the market until the 1960s (after 1931 in the form of E.M.I.). Initially the company’s records appeared on the Gramophone, Gramophone Concert or Gramophone Monarch labels, depending on the size of the disc. In 1908 the His Master’s Voice label was introduced and this trademark became so well known that the company was usually referred to by that name, rather than the Gramophone Company (which was its official designation).

In the early years of the record industry competition was intense for new markets as companies fought to expand worldwide. Following Gaisberg’s initial recording expedition to Asia in 1902–03 other companies sought to add Malay, Chinese and other Asian recordings to their catalogues and within a few years there were many labels releasing material recorded in Singapore. In this way Singapore quickly became a hub for the record industry, populated by branch offices of many companies. It was also a distribution and recording centre for the whole region.

The Gramophone Company followed up its 1903 recording sessions with others in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1916, 1917 and 1920. After 1920 there were recording sessions almost every year until 1941. By 1934 the Gramophone Company had a recording studio at 96 Cairnhill Road, and in 1936 it was operating from 147 Killiney Road. In 1941 there is mention of a recording studio at 11 Newton Road. It is unclear why there were different locations used within a relatively short period as contemporary reports rarely elaborate. The Beka Record Company also recorded in Singapore in January 1906. It returned in 1909 and by the 1920s the company was recording there regularly, although by this time it had become part of the Lindstrom group. The Beka label was discontinued in 1934.

Another company which made early recordings in Singapore was Lyrophon and its sessions were held in 1910 and again in 1913. The label’s agent in Singapore was Chop Teo Chiang, but Lyraphon ceased operations during World War I (1914-18).

The Columbia Graphophone (Gramophone?) Company was active in Singapore from 1912 onwards, but the company went through several changes of ownership before the 1930s (when it became part of E.M.I.) and as a result its recording operations were rather sporadic. Its last known recording session as an independent entity was in 1929.

The main label of the Lindstrom group (based in Berlin, Germany) was Odeon and this label began recording in Asia in 1905. Odeon was acquired by Columbia in 1926 and also subsequently became part of E.M.I.

Deutsche Grammophon was another German company based in Berlin which also conducted recording sessions in Singapore starting in 1927 and continued until 1931 with issues on the Hindenburg, Polyphon and Parlophon labels. They also made recordings for the Pagoda label which began in 1930 as a venture of Mong Huat & Co. which had been the distributor for the Gramophone Company (and later E.M.I.) since 1927. Pagoda continued to release records throughout the 1930s and was briefly revived in 1952.

In 1927 the British Edison Bell company made some recordings for local record distributors who wanted their own labels. The records of Quek Swee Chiang, Teck Chiang Long and Teo Chiang were early examples of labels which catered to niche markets such as Chinese dialect opera records in Hokkien or Teochew. All these labels were short-lived and were discontinued in 1928. But Edison Bell retained an interest in the local market and produced some eight-inch records of Malay songs on the Edison Bell Radio label in 1929–30.

There was also a very short-lived Chappell label produced by the British Crystalate Company in 1930.

The depression (or “slump” as it was usually referred to in the contempory Singapore press) put an end to much of the recording activity which had flourished in Singapore during the 1920s. Only E.M.I. continued regular recording sessions (which were mainly released on His Master’s Voice).

By 1934 the economic situation had improved sufficiently that a new label, Chap Kuching, was launched for Malay records by Moutrie & Co.¹⁴ which was the agent in Singapore for His Master’s Voice. This label continued until 1939 and was initially supervised for Moutrie by one of its long-time employees, Tom Hemsley.

Apart from Chap Kuching the only other new labels to appear in the mid-1930s were for two small private operations. These were Limophone (1935) and Foo Ann (1935-38). The later specialised in Hainanese opera and was revived in 1950.

The success of Chap Kuching seems to have encouraged Hemsley to leave Moutrie and in 1937 he started his own label, Chap Singha,¹⁵ which ran until 1941. In 1938 he also launched the Delima label¹⁶ which specialised in Javanese singers.

E.M.I. also seemed to have felt more confident about the local market in the later 1930s and in 1937 it relaunched its Columbia label with a new series for Malay records. Columbia also issued a few local Chinese records. The His Master’s Voice label continued to release both Malay and Chinese dialect records regularly.

Two more labels were introduced in 1939 that were produced in Shanghai by Pathe Orient Ltd. These were Canary, which was aimed at the Southeast Asian market, and Tjap Angsa, which was targeted more specifically at the Java market. Both were distributed in Singapore by Hemsley.¹⁷

In 1942 the Japanese invasion brought all recording activity in Singapore to a complete halt. The Japanese systematically looted the existing recording facilities and sent anything they thought useful back to Japan. No new records appeared in Singapore during the occupation except a few issues on the Sun Records label which were not local recordings.

The post-war reconstruction period was necessarily initially focused on restoring essential services and on re-establishing channels for the distribution of food and other goods, and it was not until 1947–48 that new recordings began to appear and the record industry resumed normal operations. However, things rapidly returned to normal, and by 1950 essentially the same practices and procedures as had existed in the prewar period were back in use.

There were two factors which gradually resulted in some change. The first was the development of new tastes in local music.

Malay kronchong was an established local style which had always been influenced by trends in Western music but had long existed in a standard form. During the 1930s it began to incorporate elements of American swing¹⁸ and Latin-style rhythms (such as the tango and rumba) and in the 1940s and 1950s these influences increased (and new Latin rhythms such as the samba were also adopted). There were also many new recordings inspired by the “joget craze” which began in 1949.¹⁹

In Chinese songs new developments had also started before the war with the importation of “modern Chinese” music which had first developed in Shanghai during the 1930s. This was essentially a blend of Western jazz and popular songs with elements of traditional Chinese music to form a new style of Chinese pop music that had not previously existed. The music was spread by the many recordings produced in Shanghai and Hong Kong on the New Moon and Pathe labels which were soon available in Singapore. A contemporary newspaper report headed “Singapore Band Plays Chinese Love Songs in Western Dance Rhythm”²⁰ describes the emerging popularity of this music. But the local record industry, dominated by E.M.I., was too conservative to take a chance on what was still a developing trend; thus Chinese recordings made in pre-war Singapore continued to be largely traditional opera and dialect material.

What changed this was the second factor -- the Korean War which began in 1950. This resulted in a sudden and dramatic increase in the demand for raw materials, including rubber, and directly led to the “rubber boom” of the early 1950s. Suddenly post-war austerity was replaced by prosperity, and the demand for records increased dramatically.²¹ Consequently it was now economically viable for even a conservative

record company like E.M.I. to record new styles of music and it launched several new series in order to do so. These included the Parlophone “DPE” series (1950-54), the H.M.V. “NAC” series (1952–57) and the Regal RL-50000 series (1950–52), all of which featured modern Chinese music recorded for the first time in Singapore.²²

This new interest in recording modern Chinese music was also a result of the “singing cafe” craze which developed in Singapore during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Originally a feature of the local entertainment scene during the Japanese occupation when such options were very limited, this phenomenon continued after the war and with the new prosperity reached new heights. Soon all the “Worlds” (Great World, Happy World and New World amusement parks) had “singing cafes” and the top performers were “super stars”. The new E.M.I. records featured these singers, and the best known is probably Poon Sow Keng who made her first records in Singapore at this time before going to Hong Kong in 1956 when she started recording for Pathe and became world famous.

As a consequence, the pattern of local recording in Singapore that had been standard since the 1920s underwent some major changes. Previously the major companies would conduct an annual recording session which might last a few weeks or months during which a group of artistes would record as many titles as possible and these recordings would be released gradually over the following year, before another recording session was held. In the 1950s, for the first time, the increased demand for new recordings meant that Hemsley and Co., which was the supervisor of local recordings for E.M.I., announced that “from now on there will be two recording sessions each year instead of one.”²³

Other very significant changes soon followed. One was the introduction of micro-groove vinyl records which were first announced in Singapore in 195024. Although 78 rpm shellac records continued to be the dominant format in Singapore (and elsewhere) for at least another few years, a gradual process had begun in which sales of the new vinyl discs increased until they eventually overtook the 78 rpm format in the late 1950s. The 78 rpm record was finally discontinued in 1960–61 (with some labels continuing its use a little longer than others).

A second new development was the introduction of tape recording which made the recording process much simpler and cheaper (although initially the equipment was very expensive). The first reference I have found to the use of tape recording in Singapore is in a 1951 article on the newly opened air-conditioned E.M.I. recording studios at MacDonald House in Orchard Road which was opened in January 1951²⁵; it mentions that “all recordings are made on the most modern... tape-recording apparatus... The tapes are then flown to Britain where the recordings are transferred to discs which will eventually find their way back to Malaya...”.²⁶

With the most modern recording equipment and the only air-conditioned studios in Southeast Asia, Singapore continued to be a recording hub for the region. Performers from Malaya and Indonesia came to Singapore specifically to record. A press report on “a series of recording sessions which begun (began? please check, since this is a quotation) in May, and are expected to continue well into the latter part of the year” mentions that many famous artistes were making recordings in Singapore, including “Rubiah, Momo, P. Ramlee, Asiah, Abdul Rahman, Julia and Lena, as well as many new discoveries...” and adds that “a further group of radio artistes, frequently heard in Malay programmes over Radio Republic Indonesia, also arrived in the Colony at the request of the Gramophone Company to do a number of recordings”.

The boom in record sales of the early 1950s also created opportunities for a number of smaller labels which filled niche markets. These included some pre-war labels which were revived, such as Pagoda and Foo Ann, plus a host of new labels, including Double Swallow (Teochew opera), Eastern (Hokkien pop), Flower Brand (Mandarin pop), Grand (Chinese and Malay pop), Horse Brand (Chinese pop), Piakay (Teochew opera), Tiger Brand (Chinese opera) and Unique (modern Mandarin Chinese songs).

When the Korean War ended in 1953 the “rubber boom” suddenly collapsed and record sales also suffered. The new Parlophone and Regal series mentioned above were discontinued and most of the new smaller labels disappeared. The “singing cafe” craze also came to an end and with it the demand for records by vocalists who only a few years before had been “stars”, so this area of local recording ceased quite abruptly. However, other types of recordings continued to be made and the downturn was relatively brief.

A 1955 press report notes that “the Singapore branch manager of The Gramophone Co. Ltd.... said that... record sales have risen by leaps and bounds... and we have more than doubled last year’s turnover”. ²⁷ In 1956 a new “DPE” series on Parlophone for Malay records was initiated. E.M.I. was not known for launching new record series when sales were declining, and this is quite contrary to claims made by Tan Sooi Beng that “by the 1950s advertisements of gramophone records in the local newspapers had almost disappeared...” and that there was a “decline of the 78 rpm record industry in the 1950s...”.²⁸ Both these statements are incorrect as there are plenty of newspaper and magazine advertisements throughout the 1950s, and the record industry was not in any serious decline.

The brief crisis in 1954 when the “rubber boom” suddenly ended was only temporary and record sales are reported to have been increasing strongly only a year later27. During 1957 sales only increased further as a report states: “The gramophone record business in Malaya continues to grow tremendously and some Singapore disc dealers report that their sales last year soared by as much as 25 per cent over 1956. ²⁹

While it’s true that in the late 1950s the sales of 78 rpm records were in decline, this was not a general decline of the record industry as this decline was more than made up for by increased sales of 45 rpm and L.P. vinyl records. Combined sales were actually increasing, and the changeover from the 78 rpm format to 45 rpm and L.P. discs was a normal development as a result of new types of records becoming available. All types of discs continued to sell well, but naturally new formats gradually superseded obsolete ones.

In fact, in 1958 a new manufacturer of 78 rpm records was established in Singapore. This was the first company to actually manufacture records locally. A news report states: “The Ruby Phono Co. Ltd. of Singapore has established a factory for the manufacture of gramophone records at Paya Lebar Road at a cost of $500,000. The factory, which is entirely financed by local capital, is called the Ruby Record Co. and is the first of its kind in Malaya”.³⁰ This company initially pressed 78 rpm records from masters recorded in America which were issued on the Colortune and Coral labels. These were not local recordings, but Ruby Record Co. was the first company to manufacture records in Singapore and setting up such a factory is hardly a sign that the record industry was in decline. Eventually the Colortune and Coral labels were also produced as 45 rpm vinyl pressings, and by the early 1960s the company began producing the Ruby label as 45 rpm and L.P. discs. All issues on Ruby were local recordings.

During the pre-war period all records sold in Singapore were manufactured in Britain, Europe, India or China. Since the Ruby Record Co. was a relatively small operation the importation of records manufactured elsewhere continued well into the late 1960s when several larger record factories were eventually established in Singapore. During the 1950s and most of the 1960s the majority of the records sold in Singapore were manufactured in India, Britain or Australia.

In the early 1960s the record industry in Singapore was still dominated by E.M.I. (as had been the case since the 1920s) and the organisation was famously conservative when it came to signing up local talent in its main Asian markets of Hong Kong and Singapore. By this time, E.M.I. had long enjoyed a virtual monopoly in these markets and the company probably saw no reason to go beyond the well established forms of local popular music such as Malay kronchong and Chinese opera which it had been recording for many years as these genres had been the mainstay of its local catalogues ever since the first recordings were made in Singapore in the early part of the century.

Despite the existence of a few small record companies like Horse Brand (is not a record company, please confirm) and Ruby Record Co. in Singapore in the early 1960s, there was little significant competition for huge multi-national companies like E.M.I. as the companies producing minor labels restricted their activities to niche markets. They could not hope to compete against the resources available to E.M.I. in terms of distribution and publicity.

Effectively, recording policies in the early 1960s were a continuation of the 1950s and the same limited range of genres was being produced and promoted as had been the case for at least the previous decade, or it could even be said that more or less the same limited range of material was being recorded as had been the case since the 1920s.

It was not until 1963 that any record company (interestingly it was the company Philips which had not been actively recording in Singapore prior to the 1960s) decided to release a record by a Singapore pop band. This band was The Crescendos. Although it has been claimed³¹ that the 1961 concert in Singapore by Cliff Richard and the Shadows inspired the emergence of the local guitar-based pop bands which had become very well known as representative of 1960s Singapore music, it was really the phenomenal success of the first record by The Crescendos which took everyone in the record industry by surprise, and which caused the industry to finally realise that recording local pop music had the potential to be a money-making venture.

Despite a certain amount of self-serving propaganda, largely generated by the industry itself, that recording is about preserving great or culturally significant music, record companies are and always have been profit-driven enterprises rather than the cultural philanthropists (not appropriate, suggest promoters) they like to be seen as. Once the assumption that recording contemporary popular music in Singapore would not be profitable had been demonstrated to be false, the industry began to look more seriously at extending their recording activities in the region in this direction, and within 18 months there was a very definite and significant burst of activity.

Flush with success, the Singapore branch of Philips began signing local acts quite aggressively. The initial outlet used was their newly established Mega subsidiary label, but by 1965 Philips had initiated a series of local releases which eventually resulted in a very fine catalogue of local pop releases over the next few years.³² Other labels were quick to follow suit, and around the same time Cosdel, Eagle, and even E.M.I. began actively recording a wide range of popular local music. In 1966 the Blue Star, Camel, Olympic, Pigeon, Swan and Roxy labels (all of which specialised in local artistes) also appeared, while in 1967 Decca, Polar Bear, and Squirrel began producing local recordings in Singapore.

From then on the local record industry developed very rapidly and between 1965 and 1969 more than 120 different labels released local recordings. This figure does not include the long established E.M.I. labels (Columbia, Pathe, Parlophone, Regal, Odeon, etc.), or any of the numerous labels based in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere which were also distributed (and sometimes pressed in) Singapore, or the many British, European and U.S. labels which released material recorded in those countries for the Singapore market.

In the 1960s the record industry in Singapore went from a situation in the early years of that decade in which E.M.I. almost completely dominated the local market (apart from a few very small local independent labels and imports), to a situation by the end of the 1960s in which there were literally hundreds of labels active in catering for every taste, of which about 140 labels released local recordings (a majority being

independent companies based in Singapore). This was simply an astonishing amount of activity over a short period of time for such a small market.

In a single decade (1965–75) the Singapore record industry produced a huge range of recordings in a wide variety of styles. Apart from local pressings of current Western hits and other foreign recordings, local content included recordings ranging from traditional forms to the latest pops in Chinese, Malay, English and other languages. The majority of recordings were in Malay or Chinese (with Mandarin and Cantonese accounting for most Chinese language recordings, plus some in various dialects such as Teochew or Hokkien). There were also a significant number of English language recordings, and many instrumental recordings (ranging from Western style rhythm and blues to Chinese songs played in the current “a-go-go” style).

Apart from satisfying the local market, many companies exported a significant percentage of their production, especially to Malaysia and Indonesia. One relatively small producer, Kwan Sia Record Company (which produced the Swan and Star Swan labels), reported that half of the 8,000 copies pressed of a single L.P. release were exported to Indonesia at a value of about $30,000.³³ Such specific export figures are rarely available, but projecting from this single example it is obvious that given the large volume of local production in the late 1960s a very significant value of records was being exported each year.

By 1970 there were at least four disc manufacturers in Singapore – Unique Art Records Industrial Enterprise, Life Record Industries, Phonogram Far East, and E.M.I. (South East Asia) – all of which pressed records in their own labels as well as for other companies. It is probable that there were other small-scale manufacturers as well, although exact figures are not available. But according to contemporary reports record production at these four major pressing plants reached one million discs per month.³⁴

The following is a brief examination of some of the new forces which played a significant part in these developments.

During the 1960s the increasing availability of relatively cheap and reliable airline travel within Southeast Asia meant that Singapore bands frequently toured places like Sarawak, Brunei, Bangkok or Saigon, (Sarawak is a state in Malaysia, Brunei is a country, but Bangkok and Saigon are cities; suggest towns such as Kuching and Bandar Seri Bagawan) and bands from Indonesia, Malaysia (Peninsular and East), Brunei, the Philippines and other places in the region came to Singapore to appear at hotels and nightclubs or to use Singapore as a recording centre.³⁵

The roots of the economic changes which produced rapidly increasing affluence in Singapore during the 1960s were not just a generally rising standard of living, but specific social policies that were introduced in the 1950s. One crucial element was the Central Provident Fund (CPF) which was introduced in 1954 under the British colonial government. The other crucial element was the Housing Development Board (HDB) which was established in 1959 after self- government. In the 1960s both these two institutions were linked by a scheme which allowed CPF funds to be used to purchase HDB flats. These social policies underpinned economic affluence in Singapore, leading to the creation of a middle class which could afford discretionary spending on items like records on a far larger scale than was previously possible. For example, between 1959 and 1969 the per capita income in Singapore doubled from $1,262 to $2.437, and the gross national product (GNP) increased two and a half times from $1,993 million to $4,914 million.³⁶ The increasing level of affluence accounts to a large extent for the amazing volume of records of all kinds that were produced or distributed in Singapore during the 1960s since there was obviously a much larger and more diverse market than had existed previously.

One reason that multi-national companies such as E.M.I. could monopolise the record industry in Southeast Asia before the 1960s was the fact that huge investments were required to establish record-pressing plants in the days of heavy shellac 78 rpm records. Independent record companies could not afford the costs required to set up their own manufacturing facilities, so, in order to exist, they had to become customers of one of the larger companies which would press records for them (but which would obviously not do so if the other companies’ sales were any real threat to their profits).

During the 1950s record production was revolutionised by the introduction of lightweight vinyl 45 rpm records and long-playing vinyl albums, and by the 1960s the cost of the equipment needed to produce such records was within the reach of many relatively small record companies. Another important technological development from the late 1940s was the tape machines that increasingly replaced earlier forms of recording technology. By the early 1960s, tape recording was used extensively in recording studios, which meant that the cost of making recordings was reduced very considerably.³⁷ By the mid-1960s record companies in Singapore also had access to private recording studios such as Kinetex and Rediffusion where they could record material without having to hire facilities from E.M.I. or establish their own.

The combination of these technological advances meant that producers of independent record labels were able to record and produce their own discs at much lower costs than ever before, and this was a major factor in the surge in the number of Singapore record companies during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The downside of this technological development was that unauthorised or “pirate” copies of vinyl discs could also be easily and cheaply manufactured, so much so that during the mid-1960s this became a serious problem for the record industry.³⁸ In some cases, sales of legitimate releases were very severely affected and up to 50% of record sales by the more popular artistes could be lost to “pirates”.³⁹ Eventually, stronger laws eradicated the threat of record piracy.

By the early 1970s the Singapore record industry had come a long way from the first primitive recordings made in 1903.