Moscow Pirates

There was a time in Moscow when visiting merchants were wined, dined, taken for a good steam in the bathhouse, and then tricked into selling their goods for half the price. A man bringing a wagon of firewood to the market for eight rubles might be treated to food and drink for fifty kopecks—and then talked down to four rubles. But the scams in the gramophone trade were even bolder.

No sooner had the management of the Gramophone Company, which opened a record factory in Riga in 1902, started counting its first profits from Russian sales than the market was flooded with counterfeit discs. Foreign companies guarded their production secrets fiercely. At every factory, raw materials were given false names, and in the mixing rooms, instead of scales, workers used color-coded bags filled with lead shot to measure ingredients. The exact formula for the disc compound and the recording process was a closely held trade secret, known only to a narrow circle of trusted specialists. And for good reason: in civilized countries, the gramophone business was bringing in excellent profits.

The first large-scale production of pirated “copied” records in Russia was launched in Moscow by a company called Neographon in 1902. Its founders were a colorful bunch: a disgraced accountant, a failed actor, a chemistry student, and a salesman of “eternal candles” and “cooling compresses.”

Their scheme was simple. They would buy the newest and most popular discs from the Gramophone Company, make galvanic copies, and press massive quantities. There were no expenses for artist fees, recording sessions, or advertising. The pirated records were distributed to Moscow shops and stalls and shipped to the provinces. Production grew to such a scale that Neographon even opened a branch in St. Petersburg—where the Gramophone Company’s Russian headquarters were located—trying to “compete” with the very firm it was shamelessly robbing. By offering a star-studded repertoire at dumping prices, Neographon disrupted a Russian market that was only just beginning to develop.

Eventually, patience ran out. The Gramophone Company filed a lawsuit against Neographon. But the Moscow Criminal Chamber failed to recognize the production of pirated records as a crime, seeing it as something entirely new and unfamiliar.

Disillusioned by the impotence of law enforcement and the legal system, the artists themselves stepped in. In September 1903, the Main Directorate for Press Affairs received a petition:

“In view of the advertisements published by the company ‘Neographon’ for records allegedly sung by us, we, the undersigned, declare that we have never recorded for ‘Neographon,’ and that the public is being deceived by this company through the sale of apocryphal records.”

The petition was signed by some of the most prominent performers of the day:

This petition was unprecedented and showed the depth of anger among artists over this new form of exploitation of their labor and talent. And big names had power, even then. The Directorate’s resolution instructed censorship committees and individual censors to:

“…apply the strictest standards to the catalogs of such firms, forbidding the printing of artists’ names in those catalogs or on record labels unless verified each time by the named individuals.”

This brought a legal end to the most blatant abuses.

The artists celebrated their victory with a clinking of glasses—but their joy was short-lived. Shutting down Neographon did not eliminate the root cause of piracy. Given the weakness of the law, the temptation to engage in musical theft was too strong. Soon, the market was once again flooded with counterfeit discs.

St. Petersburg Pirates

The next hotbed of piracy emerged in St. Petersburg, at the factory of the Tonophon company. After conducting a bit of “market research” to identify the best-selling artists, the Neva buccaneers, led by their ringleader Mazel, enthusiastically began mass-duplicating records of the hugely popular singer M. A. Emskaya.

Emskaya, the wife of Dmitry Bogemsky, a man who knew everyone and everything in the music business, recorded in nearly every label that existed in Russia at the time. Her discography included over 300 records! It was no surprise that whenever one of her new, successful records appeared, pirated copies would flood the market within days.

By Mazel’s own brazen admission, he sold tens of thousands of discs without paying her a single kopeck.

“For heaven’s sake,” Emskaya lamented, “it’s bad enough that this man robbed me, but he’s also given me a murderous kind of publicity. Tonophon’s discs don’t reflect my vocal ability at all… it’s just hissing, voiceless noise, like the croak of an old woman…”

But Mazel, releasing his “high-art copies” under labels like Aurora and Tonophon, couldn’t care less. After all, “money doesn’t stink.”

Soon, Mazel had competition—others using the exact same shady methods. One day, Mazel flew into a rage when International Extra Records and National Records beat him to market with pirated discs that Tonophon had also planned to copy.

He stormed into his office, threw the rival discs onto the floor, stomped on them, and shouted:

“Those crooks! Those scoundrels!”

The magazine Gramophone World fumed in its pages:

“Will the government continue to tolerate such open theft of property, answering this murderous lawlessness with silence?”

The question went unanswered, and Tonophon kept up its dirty work. By then, a full-scale factory was running on the Fontanka River: books were kept, sales agents traveled across Russia, and all of it was built on blatant fraud.

In July 1906, a technician named Multop pulled the first record off the press at St. Petersburg’s new factory. That day marked the start of one of the biggest frauds in the history of Russia’s gramophone industry—a story that still hasn’t been fully told.

Operating under the grand name “American Anonymous Partnership Melodiphone,” the company announced that it had recorded its first 150 tracks—but in reality, they were busy churning out counterfeits of Gramophone Company records.

A sales circular sent to wholesalers boasted:

“Melodiphone releases will be exclusively double-sided Giants and Grands. Prices: 4 rubles for a Giant, 2 rubles 20 kopecks for a Grand.”

Those were the exact prices at which Gramophone sold its single-sided discs at the time.

It wasn’t long, however, before reality set in: the factory couldn’t actually produce Giants. This was bluntly admitted in the next circular sent to buyers.

The factory’s owners also announced plans to open a recording studio where anyone could have their voice pressed onto discs. For 50 rubles, a customer would get 12 “Grand” records featuring their own voice. But that was all smoke and mirrors—the real money was in counterfeit production.

The quality of these pirated discs was abysmal. In the name of “cost-saving,” the thrifty pirates added brick dust, coal, and cardboard to the record compound. (Authentic records at that time were made from shellac, a special resin produced by a tiny insect from India.

After the first play, the record would turn “gray,” as the needle scratched off the top layer. After the second play, debris began to flake from the surface. By the third play, the disc had lost all sound quality.

In shops, this so-called “product” was polished with shoe wax or boot black to give it a shine—just enough to make a sale. And sell it did. People adored their favorite stars, but they also wanted to enjoy their music without emptying their wallets.

Pirates Pressure the State Duma

At the turn of the century, Russian music pirates fully understood that they could safely carry on their shady business as long as the law was weak and the authorities were corrupt. And in Russia, both conditions existed—back then, just as they do now.

By 1910, the State Duma began working on the first “Copyright Law.” Before that, there had been no legal frameworkin the country to protect the rights of authors, performers, or publishers of music recordings. As a result, pirates spread across the market like weeds. Everyone knew which factories were producing the “copies” and who ran them; legends and wild rumors surrounded the fortunes they were amassing. Unsurprisingly, no one was eager to give up such astronomical profits, and behind the scenes, a fierce lobbying war began, involving both legal producers and equally “interested” pirates.

Gramophone Fights Back

As expected, the most substantive objections and proposals came in a memorandum prepared by the largest legitimate player in the Russian music market, the Gramophone Company. Notably, this document was the first to raise the concept of neighboring rights for phonograms, an idea that hadn’t even been discussed before. The company stressed that it was spending vast sums on the production and distribution of records, while other firms were openly stealing their recordings, causing enormous losses to legitimate producers.

And indeed, the success of Gramophone had inspired a swarm of small factories across Russia, most of which operated almost exclusively by counterfeiting Gramophone’s catalog.

These facts and explicit accusations of theft were published in a separate brochure that was sent to the State Duma, government agencies, record companies, and the music press.

As the contours of the new law started to take shape, Orpheon tried to launder its image. It reinvested the money earned from pirated records into producing its own original recordings, a move that was clearly a calculated PR strategy. Soon, the music community learned of a “strange alliance” between Orpheon, the number-one pirate in Russia, and the struggling Russian branch of the otherwise reputable American company Columbia.

Gramophone was stunned to discover that these two companies, together, submitted a petition to the chairman of the State Duma, just before the second reading of the copyright bill, demanding legislative protection for their industry. Truly, the best defense is a good offense.

Orpheon’s director, Finkelstein, soon went even further. Using influential intermediaries, he “advised” Gramophone to buy his factory so that he would stop producing pirated discs. Negotiations dragged on, and eventually a contract was signed with explicit terms. Yet almost immediately afterward, Orpheon went back to counterfeiting records.

Finkelstein finally halted production only on March 20, 1911, when the new law was passed. But even that didn’t last long. He quickly found loopholes in the legislation that allowed him to resume his illicit business.

In Russia, Everyone Got Pirated—Except the Pathé Brothers

Virtually every recording company releasing popular artists in Russia fell victim to piracy—except for one: Pathé. The French company held its ground on the Russian market because the “General Company of Phonographs, Cinematographs, and Precision Devices of the Pathé Brothers” (Pathé Frères) followed its own unique technological path. They focused on adapting Thomas Edison’s ideas to a disc-based format.

Today, that decision seems perfectly logical. In many ways, Pathé anticipated the principles behind modern compact disc technology—depth modulation in their grooves was somewhat akin to digital encoding. But at the time, the logic of the recording industry was moving in a different direction.

Drawing on extensive experience from producing phonographs and cylinders, Pathé’s engineers envisioned a new type of disc that would have less surface noise than Berliner’s records and longer playing time. Depth recording technology made both of those goals possible. By developing this innovative format, the company expected to profit not only from mass sales of records but also from their new “talking machines” designed to play them. They created a uniquely constructed phonograph—outwardly similar to an ordinary gramophone—and named it after themselves: the Pathéphone.

Interestingly, this name would later become part of the Russian language, used colloquially to describe any portable gramophone, regardless of its brand. This linguistic quirk was partly due to the company’s immense popularity in Russia.

In their advertising, Pathé highlighted the remarkable advantages of their discs and machines:

“Pathé discs for the Pathéphone eliminate a major inconvenience—the changing of needles. When playing our discs, no needles are needed at all. The sound is transmitted through a sapphire stylus, which never needs replacing.”

This was no empty boast. The traditional steel needle—an inseparable part of gramophones—was eliminated. As a result, Pathé records produced far less surface hiss. The sapphire-tipped sound head, ending in a polished ball, touched the record gently, allowing it to be played many times without leaving visible wear. This “eternal needle” gave the Pathéphone a serious competitive edge.

To reproduce sound from their depth-modulated grooves, Pathé also designed a special diaphragm—the core component of their machines.

A Built-In Defense Against Piracy

Notably, the original recordings for Pathé discs were cut laterally, in the standard “Berliner style,” and then converted to vertical (depth) grooves on a special machine. This clever process served two purposes:

Later, Pathé offered existing gramophone owners an upgrade option: a Pathé tonearm and diaphragm that would transform their regular gramophone into a Pathéphone. Their discs spun at 90–100 rpm, and with this simple kit, every gramophone owner could become a Pathé customer.

It was a brilliant combination of technology and marketing, one that not only protected the company from piracy but also expanded their market dominance across Russia.

Alexander Tikhonov, from the book “The Operation They Called Counterfeit”

Source