Comments on: The Century of the Physical Musical Object http://www.josephzitt.com/wordpress/archives/372 Joseph Zitt on selling, writing, and considering books and music. Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:11:33 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: John Cowan http://www.josephzitt.com/wordpress/archives/372/comment-page-1#comment-10694 John Cowan Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:58:31 +0000 http://www.josephzitt.com/wordpress/archives/372#comment-10694 You can push that century back by quite a bit if you include printed mass-marketed sheet music. "Listen To The Mockingbird" (Winner/Milburn, 1855) was probably the #1 pop single of the second half of the 19th century, supposedly selling some 20 million copies, a quarter of them internationally. (Needless to say, this figure is not audited.) Nowadays it's best remembered as the Three Stooges theme song. And then there's player-piano rolls, the direct ancestor of MIDI recordings. You can push that century back by quite a bit if you include printed mass-marketed sheet music. “Listen To The Mockingbird” (Winner/Milburn, 1855) was probably the #1 pop single of the second half of the 19th century, supposedly selling some 20 million copies, a quarter of them internationally. (Needless to say, this figure is not audited.) Nowadays it’s best remembered as the Three Stooges theme song.

And then there’s player-piano rolls, the direct ancestor of MIDI recordings.

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