Hitsville: Writing a Hit Song

Ronnie Phillips

Chapter Chapter 2 in Rock and Roll Fantasy?, 2013, pp 15-26 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Making a living from composing music has never been easy. F. M. Scherer [125] has painstakingly made estimates of the income of the classical composers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mozart was not wealthy and wrote a voluminous amount of music. Scherer found, for the evidence available for 23 composers, that the top two accounted for 44 % of the wealth of all of the composers in the group. Franz Schubert and Mozart died in debt. In fact, when compared with other art forms like painting or sculpture, composers earned far less. In the early 1700s, under the influence of the Lutheran religion, musicians attained a higher status and influence in Germany than elsewhere in the world at the time ([40], p. 133). By the late eighteenth century, they were able to attain a steady income from compositions and performances ([40], p. 138). Most well-known composers of the period distributed their work through sheet music which provided a considerable portion of their total income ([40], p. 140).

Keywords: Popular Music; Cover Version; Music Industry; Popular Song; Sheet Music (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-5900-2_2

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