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Music Publishing 101, Part 1: A brief history

Written by: Barry Neil Shrum

Reputation Level 11

Business

Posted about 3 years ago. 2 helpful votes, 0 comments

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Music Publishing 101, Part 1: A brief history

This series will explore music publishing, giving a little bit of history and outlining the basic steps necessary to form a music publishing company. Part 1 looks at a brief history and background of music publishing. Modern music publishing in the United States can trace its roots to “Tin Pan Alley,” the name given to a group of sheet music publishers who collected on West 28th Street in New York City in the late 19th, early 20th Century, when names like Irvin Berlin and John Philip Sousa were the leading composers. This coincides roughly with the invention of introduction of Thomas Edison’s Gramophone and the phonograph cylinder. Tin Pan Alley publishers were concerned mainly with selling sheet music and piano rolls. The most dramatic shift in popularity from printed music to recorded music did not occur until the development of the “talkie,” when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927. Read entire article at lawontherow.com in the Songwriter's Corner (see link below)

Music Publishing 101, Part 2: Forming a publishing company

From a legal perspective, the formation of a music publishing company is, in most respects, very similar the formation of any other type of company, except that the documentation is tailored specifically for the business of music publishing. See the remainder of this article at the link below.