Music and Commerce

Scores, records, jingles and background music turn hearing into trade and find music an audience.

Related

ModernContemporaryMusic PublisherPiano

The question

Music has to earn money, and music has to sell other things. Scores, records, jingles and background music turn listening into trade. Does commerce corrupt music, or does it supply the fuel that carries it?

Historical arc

Nineteenth-century sheet publishers opened the home market with popular piano pieces, and ragtime sold scores across the country. Record companies and radio advertising fed each other in the twentieth century, while jingles wrote brands into melodies. Department stores and lifts used light music to pace shopping, and rock was absorbed by advertising in the 1960s. Streaming now pays by play, and short video turns a fifteen-second chorus into goods.

Key cases

Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag became a bestseller through sheet music and piano rolls. The Entertainer was monetised again and again, on rolls and later in film. Jingle Bells moved from a Thanksgiving song to a soundmark of the retail season. Publishing, copying and branding, one case each.

What to listen for

Hear whether the syncopation of Maple Leaf Rag invites repeated play. Hear whether the sections of The Entertainer are easy to cut into clips. Hear whether the chorus of Jingle Bells is memorable within ten seconds.

Related

Commercial music crosses Modern and Contemporary. Publishing is explained under Music Publisher, and the piano under Piano.

Sources

• Timothy D. Taylor, The Sounds of Capitalism (University of Chicago Press) — argument checked, not quoted
• Grove Music Online, entry "Advertising and music" — examples checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.