A work produced as a result of fixation of musical, spoken or other sounds, regardless of the nature of the material objects (such as disc, tape, cartridge, cassette, or other phonorecords) in which it is embodied is called a sound recording.
In 1984, Congress passed the Record Rental Amendment (which amended the 1976 Copyright Act) making it illegal to create phonograph records available for commercial leasing or rental without permission of the copyright owner. This law was passed to address the recording industry’s concerns about illicit copies of the rented phonograph records being made onto magnetic tapes. However, nonprofit libraries and nonprofit educational institutions were still allowed to rent out phonograph records.