MUSC 200 1st EditionExam # 1 Study Guide Lectures: 1 – 8Lecture 1 In the 1890s, music was beginning to change from a business to an industry. The United States was also changing – from being primarily agricultural to more urban and industrial. With these changes, there wasa growth in the urban middle class and working class (white and blue collar workers). New York City was emerging as a financial capital. Before NYC became the bustling city it is today, the northern area was primarily empty fields. South NYC was the business area and Mid NYC was where everyone lived in brownstone houses (I bet you can guess why they have that name). As NYC developed and grew, wealthier people moved north to build their fancy houses and whatnot. This left a lot of those brownstone houses empty. This is where Tin Pan Alley comes in. TPA moved in and took over some of those brownstone houses and converted the rooms inside into lots of small cubicles. Pan Alley (TPA) refers to a group of publishing houses in New York City in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Thephysical location of TPA was on a stretch of 28th Street near Broadway. With a piano and a songwriter in each cubicle, the place could get very noisy. During the summer (remember this is pre-air conditioning), the songwriters would open the windows. However, they didn’t want other songwriters hearing and possibly stealing the song they were working on. So they would muffle the piano by weaving cloth in between the strings. To people walking by on the outside, it was said to sound like a thousand people banging on tin pans, hence the name – Tin Pan Alley.Past music publishing companies were spread all around the country and would publish anything to make a dime. At this time, music was a business, not an industry. TPA changed this by centralizing in NYC and specializing in one style of music. The style TPA focused on was piano arrangements of popular songs. How did TPA change music from a business to a thriving industry? Well first of all, they hired songwriters to specifically write songs in the style they desired. Whereas in the past, songwriters would write on their own and approach the publishing company to publish their songs. TPA also hired song pluggers. The pluggers’ job was to market and push the songs to get them out to the public. At this time, the cylinder recorder hasn’t been invented yet, so TPA relied on selling printed sheet music. Sheet music was the only way to reproduce the music heard at live performances. A “proper” family had a piano or a reed organ, which is a piano-like instrument that was much cheaper. The ideal family would have the mother playing the piano with her children gathered behind her singing. TPA changed from a business to an industry by not only publishing and producing, but also marketing, manipulating the legal system, and making deals with other sectors of the entertainment business. Music marketing was a big part of TPA. TPA hired their songwriters to write songs that appealed to a specific audience, the one mentioned before with the mother and children. Sometimes, marketing actually ends up creating the audience that they want to market to. While the music business catered to the current needs, the music industry created new needs as well as fulfilling current ones. Songs were marketed towards the woman of the home as music making was considered a woman’s industry. Consistent with the traditional gender roles and stereotypes of our society, this resulted in songs that were sentimental, cheerful, “G” rated, These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.and romantic, with nothing temperamental or potentially upsetting. TPA also manipulated the legal system to get what they wanted. They pushed Congress to create and revise copyright laws so TPA’s profits would be maximized. In addition, TPA made deals with various Vaudeville musicians and booking agents. Vaudeville can be compared to a modern day talent show, but pretty much everyone in Vaudeville was actually talented. These variety shows had a cheap ticket price, so the audience mostly consisted of those in the working class. By getting their music into Vaudeville, TPA had a new subset of the population listening to their songs.Lecture 2Let’s return to the topic of song plugging. Song plugging can be compared to when actors/actresses and musicians go on late night talk shows for interviews and then just happen to drop their movie or album name. During TPA times, song pluggers were hired marketers whose job was to get a song into the publicas much as possible and in as many ways as possible. As you can imagine, things could get aggressive. While showrooms provided an easy way for marketers to get their songs out, not everyone would go inside. Some pluggers would stand outside of the showrooms and shout at people walking by. If that wasn’t effective, some would take to dragging people inside to listen to a song. Pluggers also cruised bars, night clubs, and theaters to pay (either in cash or with gifts) musicians and booking agents to play the newest song. Vaudeville was an especially good place for that to happen. Pluggers not only had to get the song heard, but they also had to get the audience excited for it. Popularity is largely about creating a powerful impression and then getting people to talk about it. In addition to pluggers, TPA also hired “shillers”. Shillers were people who were paid to sit in the audience and get really excited and emotional about the song, they often would start loudly singing along during the chorus. TPA also had people passing out lyric sheets for the new songs so the entire audience could sing along. Grabbing the audience’s attention was half the battle, if the song was good enough, it would take off. Another way to get the audience interested in a song was to show lantern slides, an early form of image projection. Like current day music videos and album artwork, the lantern slides would show images related to the song to generate excitement and emotion in the audience. Wherever music would be, pluggers could be found. Picnics, cruises, and political rallies are only a few of the places pluggers were known to carouse. TPA grew to be part of an oligopoly. In an oligopoly, there are few sellers so they can control the prices. There were only 3-4 large publishing