People have been buying sheet music for a lot longer than that.
Of course it's true virtually by definition that the "modern" incarnation of the music business has not been around for very long.
Of course it's true virtually by definition that the "modern" incarnation of the music business has not been around for very long.
but even if the original ranting comment was only talking about the modern music business, that starts with sheet music publishing in the 19th century, not this made-up nonsense about churches and bars.
and the 19th century sheet music publishing business was itself founded on hundreds of years of sheet music publishing that came before it, just at a smaller scale.
The first sheet music printed (15th century) was almost exclusively liturgical (i.e., religious).
Similarly, it's no accident that the first popular work of the printed word was the Gutenberg Bible.
Anyway, whatever the beginnings of the industry, there was a very large secular sheet music market shortly thereafter. I’d love to hear the cynical analysis of the madrigal industry, but I suspect the truth of it is a lot simpler: people enjoy singing songs.
From Wikipedia:
> Jacques Arcadelt (also Jacob Arcadelt; c. 1507 – 14 October 1568[1]) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in both Italy and France, and principally known as a composer of secular vocal music. Although he also wrote sacred vocal music, he was one of the most famous of the early composers of madrigals; his first book of madrigals, published within a decade of the appearance of the earliest examples of the form, was the most widely printed collection of madrigals of the entire era.
I just wanted to point out that people have been able to "own" music since long before it was possible to record music. So there is a long history of music being a product.