ABSTRACT
Prominent among concert promoters were the music publishers themselves. Publishers looked upon operas as storehouses of profitable individual sheet-music items. Many music publishers relied on sales of instruments as well as sheet music; salient names here are Chappell, Metzler, D'Almaine, and Boosey. By 1870 no publisher catered exclusively for the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie, and all the larger publishers were selling internationally. Publishers were treading on each other's toes because the market for minstrel songs was so extensive, reaching into drawing room, music-hall, and even the classroom. The activities of Wall led to publishers like Boosey attaching the comment 'Maybe sung in public without fee or license [sic]' to their ballads. The 'royalty ballad' system did not always operate as smoothly as publishers wished, either. Nevertheless, it was not long before a small publisher, Hutchinson, started paying those lesser singers to promote his own firm's songs, a move which forced the big publishers into this area as well.
