
Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of
music notation, while ensuring that the
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
,
songwriter
A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...
and other creators receive credit and
royalties
A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...
or other payment (where applicable). This article outlines the early history of the industry.
Printing
Music publishing did not begin on a large scale until the mid-15th century, when mechanical techniques for printing music were first developed. The earliest example, a set of
liturgical chant
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
s, dates from about 1465, shortly after the
Gutenberg Bible. Prior to this time, music had to be copied out by hand. This was a very labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so it was first undertaken only by monks and priests seeking to preserve
sacred music for the church. The few collections of
secular music
Non-religious secular music and sacred music were the two main genres of Western music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance era. The oldest written examples of secular music are songs with Latin lyrics.Grout, 1996, p. 60 However, many secular s ...
that are extant were commissioned and owned by wealthy noblemen. Examples include the
Squarcialupi Codex
The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early 15th century. It is the single largest primary source of music of the 14th-century Italian ''Trecento'' ...
of Italian
Trecento
The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history.
Period Art
Commonly, the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history. Painters of the Trecento included Giotto ...
music and the
Chantilly Codex of French
Ars subtilior
''Ars subtilior'' (Latin for 'subtler art') is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered on Paris, Avignon in southern France, and also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century.Hoppin 1978, 47 ...
music. Hand copying persisted long after the invention of printing and music was widely disseminated in manuscript form well into the 18th century, both in personal copying and scribal publication.
Petrucci
The father of modern music printing was
Ottaviano Petrucci, a printer and publisher who was able to secure a twenty-year
monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
on printed music in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
during the 16th century. His first collection was entitled ''
Harmonice Musices Odhecaton'' and contained 96
polyphonic
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...
compositions, mostly by
Josquin des Prez
Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...
and
Heinrich Isaac. He flourished by focusing on
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
works, rather than Italian, as they were very popular throughout Europe during the Renaissance. His printing shop used the triple-impression method, in which a sheet of paper was pressed three times. The first impression was the staff lines, the second the words, and the third the notes. This method produced very clean results, though it was time-consuming and expensive.
Rastell
Around 1520 in England,
John Rastell developed a single-impression method for printing music. With his method, the staff lines, words and notes were all part of a single piece of type, making it much easier to produce. However, this method produced messier results, as the staff lines were often inexactly aligned and looked wavy on the page. The single-impression method eventually triumphed over Petrucci's, however, and became the dominant mode of printing until
copper-plate engraving
Intaglio ( ; ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that m ...
took over in the 17th century. This method was adopted and used widely by a Frenchman,
Pierre Attaingnant
Pierre Attaingnant (or Attaignant) (c. 1494 – late 1551 or 1552) was a French Music publisher (sheet music), music publisher, active in Paris.
Life
Attaingnant is considered to be first large-scale publisher of single-impression movable type for ...
.
Copyright

The concept of musical copyright had its beginnings in the reign of
King Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disag ...
of England who required copies of all printed matter to be sent to him and offered protection to printers in the form of licenses, primarily to produce a new source of revenue. In 1575
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen".
El ...
granted
Thomas Tallis
Thomas Tallis (23 November 1585; also Tallys or Talles) was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Tallis is considered one o ...
and his pupil
William Byrd a 21-year patent monopoly on the printing and publishing of polyphonic music.
[J. P. Wainright, 'England ii, 1603–1642' in J. Haar, ed., ''European Music, 1520–1640'' (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 509-21.] The first modern copyright law was the
Statute of Anne
The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710 (cited either as 8 Ann. c. 21 or as 8 Ann. c. 19), was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1710, which was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the g ...
(1709), which protected all published works for a period of fourteen years, later extended to twenty-eight years. The earliest attempt at a printed musical
copyright notice appears in the
"Shir Hashirim" of
Salomone Rossi (Venice, 1623) which includes a
rabbinical
Rabbinic Judaism ( he, יהדות רבנית, Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian ...
curse on those
infringing the text, written by
Leon of Modena.
1886 Berne Convention
The first international agreement involving copyright was the
Berne Convention of 1886. The core principle of the Convention is its provision that each of the contracting countries shall provide automatic protection for works in all other countries of the union and for unpublished works whose authors are citizens of or residents in those countries. Performance rights are included in these provisions. As of March 2012, 165 countries had become parties to the convention.
United States
The first U.S.
federal copyright law gave protections to "maps, charts, and books." Contrary to some scholarly accounts, the 1790 Act's protection of "books" did encompass musical compositions. The first registration in the U.S. for a musical composition was made on January 6, 1794 by
Raynor Taylor for the original song "
The Kentucky Volunteer
"The Kentucky Volunteer" is a song published in the United States on January 6, 1794. Its music was composed by Raynor Taylor and its lyrics by "a Lady of Philadelphia". It is noteworthy for being the first musical composition copyrighted under th ...
."
[William F. Patry, Copyright Law and Practice 30 n.91 (2000) (“The first registration for a musical composition was made on January 6, 1794, for The Kentucky Volunteer: A New Song, written by ‘a lady of Philadelphia.’ The composer is believed to have been Raynor Taylor.”) (citing Federal Copyright Records 1790–1800 at 15 (1987)).] However, musical compositions were not ''explicitly'' protected until the
Copyright Act of 1831
__NOTOC__
The Copyright Act of 1831 was the first major revision to the U.S. Copyright Law. The bill is largely the result of lobbying efforts by American lexicographer Noah Webster.
The key changes in the Act included:
* Extension of the origin ...
, and then protection remained limited to reproduction rights. The copyright term was twenty-eight years plus a fourteen-year renewal period.
Performing rights

While England was a leader in the development of copyright, the French led the way in performing rights. In 1777,
Pierre de Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (; 24 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist ...
founded the ''"Bureau de Legislation Dramatique"'' which became the present
Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) in 1829. Many years later, in 1847, this inspired the composer and
librettist Ernest Bourget
Ernest Alexandre Joseph Bourget (10 March 1814 – 2 October 1864 in Thomery (Seine-et-Oise aged 50 ) was a 19th-century French playwright, lyricist and librettist. In 1847 at the Café des Ambassadeurs, Paul Henrion, Victor Parizot and Ernest B ...
to claim payment for each performance of his works at
Les Ambassadeurs, a leading Café-concert venue of that time. A
lawsuit
-
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
won by Bourget and others in 1851 led to the formation of the
Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM) – the first performing rights society in the world.
Other countries followed suit: The Italian
Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) was founded in 1882 and the Spanish ''"Sociedad de Autores"'', predecessor of the current
Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), in 1899. The predecessor to the
Gesellschaft für Musikalische Aufführungs und Mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (GEMA) was formed in Germany by composer
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
in 1903. It became GEMA in 1915 when it merged with another small society. So, by the end of the 19th century, the foundation had been laid for the modern music publishing industry.
Early modern era: 18th century
German publishers
As England was a leader in developing copyright systems and France was ahead in developing performing rights, Germany was the pioneering country in modern music publishing. The first German music publishing enterprises date from the 18th century.
Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf of
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, a printer and general publisher, decided to specialize in music printing as of 1754. He became successful by developing improvements in the setting of music type.
Gottfried Christoph Härtel joined the firm in 1795, which soon became the partnership of
Breitkopf & Härtel. They were the original publishers for a who's-who of great German composers, including
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
,
Haydn,
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
,
Schubert,
Schumann and
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
.
Schott Music
Schott Music () is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe, and is the second oldest music publisher after Breitkopf & Härtel. The company headquarters of Schott Music were fou ...
of
Mainz
Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...
was founded in 1770 by
Bernhard Schott
Bernhard Peter Schott (9 August 174826 April 1809) was a German clarinetist and music publisher. He founded the predecessor of Schott Music, a major German music publishing company which continues to this day.
Biography
Schott was the eldest chi ...
and still exists today. They specialized in French and Italian operas and, more recently, have published works by
Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
,
Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
,
Orff
Carl Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata ''Carmina Burana'' (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education.
Life
Early life
Carl O ...
,
Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
and
Henze.
N. Simrock
N. Simrock (in German Musikverlag N. Simrock, Simrock Verlag, or simply Simrock) was a German music publisher founded by Nikolaus Simrock which published many 19th-century German classical music composers. It was acquired in 1929 by Anton Benjamin ...
of
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
, and later Berlin, was established in 1790 by
Nikolaus Simrock. Their original publications included works by Beethoven, Haydn,
Meyerbeer,
Weber
Weber (, or ; German: ) is a surname of German origin, derived from the noun meaning " weaver". In some cases, following migration to English-speaking countries, it has been anglicised to the English surname 'Webber' or even 'Weaver'.
Notable pe ...
,
Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...
, Schumann and
Brahms.
United States
In 1764,
Josiah Flagg
Josiah ( or ) or Yoshiyahu; la, Iosias was the 16th king of Judah (–609 BCE) who, according to the Hebrew Bible, instituted major religious reforms by removing official worship of gods other than Yahweh. Josiah is credited by most biblical s ...
compiled the first collection of popular and religious music, printed on paper made in the colonies. The post-revolutionary period was notable for the arrival of the first professional music publishers from Europe in the 1770s. They opened shops in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, New York,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, bringing with them European technology.
Benjamin Carr and
James Hewitt were two important early American music publishers. The first song published under US copyright was
The Kentucky Volunteer
"The Kentucky Volunteer" is a song published in the United States on January 6, 1794. Its music was composed by Raynor Taylor and its lyrics by "a Lady of Philadelphia". It is noteworthy for being the first musical composition copyrighted under th ...
, by Carr's own house.
In the first quarter of the 19th century alone, 10,000 pieces of popular music were printed by U.S. publishers. The industry, however, did nothing to promote music or develop writers. Songs became popular by word-of-mouth. Most
minstrel troupes and professional singers wrote their own music or had songs written to order.
Stephen Foster was the first composer who tried to make a living as an independent professional songwriter but, in the 1850s, copyright protection was so lax and royalties so small (or non-existent) that he found himself living in poverty. This changed only gradually as young men involved in other business enterprises began to perceive the possibilities for enrichment in song publishing.

Prior to the 1880s, popular music publishing was a secondary function of music stores or "serious" (
Classical) music publishers. After 1880, publishers in New York developed a promotional technique called
plugging. By 1900, most music publishers had clustered their businesses along 28th St. (between
6th Ave. and
Broadway) in order to be closer to New York's thriving entertainment center. This area came to be known as
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...
. The first decade of the 20th century saw the production of more popular music than had ever been written up to that time: about 25,000 songs annually. In 1893, sheet music for the song
"After the Ball" sold one million copies and, over the next ten years, went on to sell a total of ten million.
Despite the enactment of new U.S. copyright legislation, including the 1891
Chace Act, which allowed for the international protection of copyrights, the provisions of the
1909 Copyright Act
The Copyright Act of 1909 () was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; ...
were generally ignored. To correct this situation, operetta composer
Victor Herbert established the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...
(ASCAP), in 1914. It quickly attracted prominent composers such as
Irving Berlin and
John Philip Sousa, and was able to ensure that everyone was properly paid and credited for their work.
Licensing
There are many aspects to music publishing. Chief among them is the licensing of music for use in advertising, television, films and other purposes. Music publishing started out by just being the publishing of the actual sheet music, and not even the score. Song sheets were made which just had the lyrics of a popular song. In the 19th century, sheet music for songs began including a simple piano accompaniment and notation for the song's melody. In the 2010s, music publishing is the exploitation of compositions (songs, instrumental pieces, and other music) for various performance uses, including newer uses such as licensing for video games, for use by recording artists looking for their next hit single and for use in a range of licensing purposes.
Licenses
Within music publishing there are many different types of licenses. For instance:
*Blanket license
*Mechanical license
*Performing Rights License (PRO)
*
Synchronization License or Sync Rights
A blanket license is an annual fee paid to one of the key performing rights organizations (PRO) (
SESAC
SESAC is a for-profit performance-rights organization in the United States. Founded in 1930 as the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, it is the second-oldest performance-rights organization in the United States. ,
ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...
, or
BMI). The blanket license paid to the PRO covers every work that is in the PRO's catalog. Blanket licenses are mostly used by television networks and radio stations so that they have the right to play any song or piece from one catalog instead of paying license fees for each song individually.
[Mark Halloran, ''Musician's Business & Legal Guide (4th Edition)'' (Prentice Hall, 2007)]
A mechanical license is issued when a recording artist wishes to sell their recording of a written composition. It serves as a notice to the composition owners that sales are forthcoming and that royalties dictated by a statutory rate will be owed and paid to them.
A Performing Rights License (PRO) is the license that gives the licensee the right to publicly perform the song/work.
Lastly, a sync license grants the right to use the composition in the synchronization of a recording over a moving picture in a film, advertisement, television show or any other audiovisual work. For the same synchronization use, one must also obtain a master use license, which grants rights to use the sound recording, which is a separately owned asset from the composition.
A
music publisher negotiates the uses and fees for the songwriters and composers on their roster. In the 2010s, publishing companies are a main source of revenue besides live touring, because sync licensing has persisted as a substantial income source while the music industry underwent changes that saw their previously dominant income source, record sales, steadily decline.
Technologies
Sound recording
The invention and development of
sound recording
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...
resulted in a redefinition of the concept of publishing, much the same as
online music stores in the 2000s would later revolutionize how recordings are purchased. Initially, popular music was slow to take advantage of the new technology. In 1910, when sales of the new disc format exceeded those of the old cylinder, more than 75% of the records sold were classical music. One factor in this may have been the expense, which would have concentrated sales among the more upscale purchasers. Until 1925, sheet music sales continued to surpass discs and were the primary source of revenue for publishers and composers. At that point, sheet music sales began to decline while records were still providing inadequate income to compensate. This led to short lived but serious economic problems for some publishers.
Film music
Samuel Fox (1884–1971)
Samuel Fox (1884–1971) was an American music publisher and founder of the Sam Fox Publishing Company.
Early life
The son of Hungarian immigrants Simon and Sara Klein Fox, Samuel Fox was born at Zanesville, Ohio on May 15, 1884. His father was a ...
who founded the
Sam Fox Publishing Company
The Sam Fox Publishing Company was an American music publishing house, founded in 1906 by Sam Fox of Cleveland, Ohio. The company was the first to publish original film scores in the United States, and was the publisher of numerous artists and int ...
in 1906, was the first to publish original film scores.
["Music Publisher Sam Fox Dies at 89"; Associated Press, '']Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'', Hagerstown, Maryland; Dec. 4, 1971; pg 12. In 1927, after the release of ''
The Jazz Singer'' (the first
talkie), the need for music led movie studios to buy music publishing companies, gaining both catalogues of music and experienced composers at the same time. For example, in 1929,
Warner Brothers
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American Film studio, film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, Califo ...
paid 10 million dollars for
Harms,
Witmark
Witmark was a catalog showroom and jewelry/electronics chain that operated in West Michigan from 1969 to 1997. The chain was founded by Paul Leven.
Over its nearly 30-year history, Witmark dominated the jewelry market with an average of a 3 ...
and
Remick Remick is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Dylan Remick (born 1991), American soccer player
* Elinor Remick Warren (1900–1991), American composer
* Glenn Remick (1951–2009), American darts player
* Jerome Remick (1928–200 ...
;
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
bought
Leo Feist Inc.
Leopold Feist (January 3, 1869, New York City – June 21, 1930, Mount Vernon, New York), in 1897 founded and ran a music publishing firm bearing his name. In the 1920s, at the height of the golden age of popular music, his firm was among the seve ...
and some smaller companies;
Paramount
Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to:
Entertainment and music companies
* Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...
started its own publishing division,
Famous Music
Famous Music Corporation was the worldwide music publishing division of Paramount Pictures, a division of Paramount Global since 1994. Its copyright holdings span several decades and includes music from such Academy Award-winning motion pictures ...
.
See also
*
Music engraving
*
Music publisher (popular music)
*
Music publisher (sheet music)
A music publisher is a type of publisher that specializes in distributing music. Music publishers originally published sheet music. When copyright became legally protected, music publishers started to play a role in the management of the intellect ...
*
Sheet music
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...
*
Copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
*
Universal Circulating Music Library
Universal Circulating Music Library was a music publishers' activity established in the United Kingdom in the 1850s and 1860s. By the 1920s no significant such circulating libraries by music publishers survived, most probably due to reduced demand ...
*
List of women music publishers before 1900
Women music publishers have existed since the late 16th century, but were comparatively rare before the 20th century. Most of these names were extracted from searching WorldCat using prefixes such as "Veuve" or "Witwe" and their variants (both mea ...
*
Record label
A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...
References
Further reading
* Fisher, William Arms (c1933, reprint 1977). ''One Hundred and Fifty Years of Music Publishing in the United States: An Historical Sketch with Special Reference to the Pioneer Publisher, Oliver Ditson Company, Inc., 1783–1933''. Scholarly Press.
*
*
* Kidson, Frank (1900). ''British Music Publishers, Printers, and Engravers – from Queen Elizabeth's Reign to George the Fourth's''. London. (republished by Benjamin Blom, New York, 1967). Library of Congress Cat. Card No.67-23861
* Krummel, D. W. (1975). ''English Music Printing, 1553–1700''. Bibliographical Society.
* Lenneberg, Hans (c2003). ''On the Publishing and Dissemination of Music, 1500–1850''. Pendragon Press. {{ISBN, 1-57647-078-4
External links
Music Printing History Excellent techniques overview.
Music Dedications history Lists of published music dedications in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Music publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
History of mass media
Music industry