By 1914, Billboard claimed a circulation of 38,000 per issue. Remarkably, after 20 years, the cover price still was 10 cents, although an annual subscription was up to $4. Advertising prices had risen considerably; a full-page ad was up to $175. Issues of 50 to 60 pages were the norm. "W.H. Donaldson, Publisher" was the sole name at the top of the masthead.

Billboard now had its own building (constructed in 1912) at 25 Opera Place in Cincinnati and had added offices in Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Baltimore and Paris.

The magazine still was dotted with small, sensationalistic items on the murders and accidental deaths that continued to dog the entertainment profession. But most of its pages were given over to departments with such names as New Theatrical Productions, Motion Picture News, Union Forum and Carnival Caravans. There even was a listing of Popular Songs Heard In Vaudevil (sic) Theaters Last Week?a precursor of today's music charts. (It was soon renamed The Billboard's Song Chart.)

The decade closed for Billboard with a spectacular Christmas issue of 236 pages. Weekly circulation was pegged at more than 52,000. The cover price had risen to 15 cents with the Dec. 16, 1916, issue, but an annual subscription had gone down to a mere $3.

By this point, recorded music was starting to make its impact, bringing a new form of entertainment into the home and fueling a succession of national dance crazes. The music industry had gone beyond piano rolls (for player pianos) and sheet music. Billboard took note, describing the phonograph in a Sept. 15, 1917, editorial as "the greatest of all music carriers."

The term "phonograph" had been coined by Thomas Edison as early as 1877 to describe his machine for the recording and playback of sound. Other pioneers developed competing contraptions in the ensuing decades and these units, along with the cylinders and discs they could play, were primarily brought to market under the names Columbia and Victor. By 1920, these early "labels" were joined in the marketplace by the likes of OKeh, Pathe, Vocalion, Brunswick and Emerson.

Although the music business was starting to take shape around such labels, Billboard's music coverage remained primarily focused on music publishers. In the 1920s, songwriters and publishers shared a page in Billboard under two headings: Land O' Melody and Who's Who In Songland. There also was an early music column, dubbed Melody Mart.

Throughout the 1920s, the recorded music business boomed, reaching $75 million in sales in 1929. The start of that decade also saw the arrival of radio as a factor in music popularity and as an area for coverage by Billboard. The emergence of the first commercial radio stations in 1920 was greeted with glee by some in the music business, but raised alarms for others who feared free music over the airwaves could kill record sales. Billboard weighed in on the matter in the Jan. 10, 1925, issue with this caveat: "Radio broadcasting if properly directed by the publishers to the extent where the song in question is not killed by being radio'd to death, may prove beneficial and a stimulant to sheet-music and record sales."

By 1930, Billboard had a full-page broadcasting section called Radio Entertainers, focusing mainly on famous performers' radio appearances. A Jan. 4, 1930, headline trumpeted, "Radio Seen As One Of The Biggest Branches Of The Show Business." The magazine introduced its first television column in 1932 and seven years later, the radio section was renamed Radio & Television.

If the 1920s were "roaring," Billboard was still prim and proper. In 1925, the magazine regularly published this credo: "Artistry? Yes?in terms of economics but frankly, chiefly and primarily concerned with the business end of the profession: ardently advocating better business practice, and firmly committed to cleanliness as a business asset."

Despite such a mission statement, Billboard played a role in the growth of the gossip column, hiring a young Walter Winchell in 1920 and publishing his juicy items under the title Stage Whispers. They were signed by "The Busybody."

Also in 1920, Billboard made an announcement that represented an historic breakthrough: The magazine hired James Albert Jackson, an African-American writer, to provide the first regular national coverage of black entertainment. "J.A. Jackson's Page" debuted in January 1921, dedicated to the "Interest of the Colored Actor, Showman and Musician of America." It was a dramatic moment in journalism and a point of pride for Billboard founder William Donaldson.

Donaldson had much to be proud of. Throughout the 1920s, his magazine typically ran 120-140 pages and was dense with advertisements and one-inch news items, along with pages and pages of columns on theater, vaudeville, burlesque and motion pictures. But amid this prosperity, Bill Donaldson's health was failing. He died on Aug. 1, 1925, at the age of 61. Within three years, Billboard was facing bankruptcy. With the creditors at the door, Donaldson's son-in-law, Roger Littleford, stepped in to take over the reins.

Soon Billboard was back on the right financial track, although, like the rest of America, it had to ride out the stock market crash and the coming of the Great Depression. The music business tumbled back to $5.5 million in sales by 1933. Billboard's issues were typically running 60-90 pages ? still hefty, but down considerably from 10 years earlier. The magazine was still dense and gray (as were most newspapers of the time) but now sported colorful art-deco covers, often with leading show business lights of the day, such as Jack Benny and the husband-and-wife team of George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Amid all the coverage of theater, film, radio and music, Billboard still provided significant coverage of carnivals, fairs, circuses and other amusements. These businesses still veered into the shady or the shoddy but they provided a significant percentage of Billboard's ad revenue. They continued to make for some of the magazine's most memorable reporting, such as the brief item in the Oct. 7, 1933, issue headlined "Buried Alive Stunt" and datelined Norfolk, Va. The item read, in full: "Billy West (J.R. Westheimer) has been refused permission to stage his buried alive stunt in this city, City Manager I. Walke Truxton declaring that while there is no ordinance prohibiting, he failed to see where any benefit would accrue the community therefrom."

Billboard rebounded strongly by the middle of the decade, thanks largely to the juke box business. The mechanical music machines began to flourish in this period and major juke box manufacturers like Seeburg, Wurlitzer and Rock-Ola (the name predates the birth of rock'n'roll) became big-time Billboard advertisers.

This support left a powerful impression on Billboard's management. More and more they committed space to music coverage. Billboard's importance in measuring music popularity was presaged in 1936, when the magazine introduced a feature called "Chart Line," which listed the most-played songs on the three major radio networks. Then, in the July 27, 1940, issue, Billboard introduced the "Best Selling Retail Records" chart, considered to be the antecedent of today's Hot 100 Singles chart. The first national No. 1 was "I'll Never Smile Again," by Tommy Dorsey (with vocals by Frank Sinatra).

For the juke box operators, Billboard began publishing a "Record Buying Guide," which was formalized in January 1944 as the "Most-Played In Juke Boxes" chart. The popularity of songs at radio was measured separately and ranked for the first time with a 15-position chart that debuted in the Jan. 27, 1945, issue. The original name of that chart -- "Disks With Most Radio Plugs" ?- amply illustrated that radio was now firmly understood to provide promotional value for music. That name was soon changed to "Records Most-Played On The Air."