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The Commercial Revolution In American Music
Harvard University Press
June 2009
On Sale: May 31, 2009
368 pages
ISBN: 067403337X
EAN: 9780674033375
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to
phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores
the rise of music as big business and the creation of a
radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the
twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation
for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies,
and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the
daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air
with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought
opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico
Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to
coast. Selling Sounds uncovers the origins of the culture
industry in music and chronicles how music ignited an
auditory explosion that penetrated all aspects of society.
It maps the growth of the music business across the social
landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and
analyzes the effect of this development on everything from
copyright law to the sensory environment. While music came
to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as
sound ensured that its commercial growth and social impact
would remain unique. Today, the music that surrounds us—from
iPods to ring tones to Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from
airports to grocery stores. The roots of this modern culture
lie in the business of popular song, player-pianos, and
phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original, and
lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial
architecture of America’s musical life. (20090512)
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