International Music publishing as a nexus for Popular Music Production 1930-1950
Franziska Kollinger
In the first half of the 20th century, genres of popular music like revue and operetta made a notable contribution to the internationalization of European popular music, especially due to the multiple media change – from stage to screen, and from sheets to records. The project focuses on the increasing interactions and international interdependencies between music-publishing and -recording industries, which had a decisive influence on the production of popular music in the period 1930-1950 and on the dynamization of global music distribution.
By discussing the production conditions of popular music in the German-speaking world using examples of leading music publishing houses, the project illustrates the systematic interweaving of production strategies and distribution structures across media, national and ideological borders. Thus, questions about the relationship between political restrictions and market-driven popular music arise, which in turn point to the development of a dynamic, self-reinforcing networking structure that linked the various media and their production organs with each other and ultimately ensured an even stronger dissemination and consolidation of the musical repertoire in the cultural memory, and through time and space.