New Member In NYC - Music Business Help Needed

Hi everyone - I'm new to this forum. I'm 56 years old and started collecting when I was around 10 years old growing up on Long Island. My parents fostered my collecting so I quickly acquired a set of Big Blues and a Scott Specialized US album. Over the years, I started to move my US collection to White Ace (about 15 volumes thru 2010) and 5 White Ace albums for Israel.

I'm tried printing my own albums for Brazil and Greece and I'm thinking about printing Tom Kendall's Mostly Classics USpages as I'm focusing on the US classics.

I got serious about collecting after stumbling upon Graham Beck's YouTube series in 2021. I go to at least 4-5 stamp shows a year (I went to Norpex yesterday)!

I belong to APS, CCNY, USPCS, ATA, RPSL and love listening to the Stamp Show Here Today podcast.

I'm an entertainment lawyer and have a software company and need help in a new area - I want to collect the commercial mail of the music business - covers from record labels (like RCA Records, Atlantic Records),music publishers, historic concert venues, etc.

Happy to be here!

Welcome Fivefirm!

Sounds like a fun topical subject, which must be neat to connect to your biz as well.

Looking forward to seeing some of your entertainment covers. Are you going back to the '60s or even earlier, like to the 20's/30's?

thanks orstampman - actually, the roots of the modern music business go back to the collection of royalties due to songwriters from the sale of printed sheet music.

Today, the income that songwriters receive from sheet music sales is extremely limited. But I just looked up an interesting historical fact: Oh! Susanna was written in 1847. The songwriter, Stephen Foster, sold his rights to Firth, Pond & Company, an American music company that published sheet music and distributed musical instruments in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That company was sold to Carl Fischer Music that was formed in 1872 which is still operating today on Wall Street in NYC.

So, it would be awesome to find covers from Firth, Pond & Company or Carl Fischer Music!

Welcome aboard. I'm a non-entertainment intellectual property lawyer in Austin, Texas, but used to live in NYC. And 59, close to your age. Be sure to go to the CCNY dinner on May 11. The postal history of the music industry is a great area to focus on and not something I have seen exhibited in the past 20 years that I've been active. Try setting up a saved search at Phil Banser's site and see what hits you get.

Chris

Here is one of my favorites. It is also a patent envelope meant to be opened by pulling the wire along the bottom edge. The recipient slit it open along the top instead and about half an inch of rusted wire remains visible at each end.



And in a more modern version of music publishing....

thanks Chris - looking forward to meeting you at the CCNY dinner (I'll be there)!

John: this is exactly the kind of material - a music publisher is an entity that collects royalties on behalf of songwriters from streaming media, physical goods (CDs, vinyl), synch uses (TV, film) and radio play. Here's what I found on Howley, Haviland & Dresser: https://imslp.org/wiki/Howley,_Haviland_&_Co.

thanks, David

A "Writer of Song-Words".
Quite a bit on her extensive work on the internet too.

@JohnBecker - very cool!

There are a couple covers for Carl Fischer on ebay, early 20th century.

No covers for Firth, Pond but there was sheet music.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3853510592...9SR6ySoebFYw

Hi raymodj - thank you - a lot to go through on ebay - I started going down the Stamp rabbit hole! ha

A quick ebay search under the U.S. postal history category for:
music ("sheet", "publisher, "publishers", "printer", "printers", "company", "dealer")
yields 133 hits, which suggests one could focus on "The Postal History of the Music Industry in New York City" and exhaust ones time and resources
Not to mention relevant covers which have only a generic corporate name not mentionning their product, and poor describers, and covers listed under various non-philatelic music memorabilia categories, (although any of these features often save you money!)

See also this: https://goscf.com/t/77248&whichpage=1

I will be back later with some name specific sheet music.

As promised:

Yes, sheet music!
"Bring Me a Letter from My Old Home Town" copyright 1918:


"Mail Call" copyright 1945:


And more covers
Lawrence, Kansas music dealer (stamp missing):


Baird's Mouth Organ with music!


WWII-era soldier recordings, typically made at places like U.S.O. lounges:

Fivefirm,

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby. Sounds like you are a perfect candidate to become a postal history collector?

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ