Manufacturer produced pop’s beginnings are exactly contemporaneous with the invention of recording. Just as soon as people learned that they could sell a record

Manufacturer produced pop’s beginnings are exactly contemporaneous with the invention of recording. Just as soon as people learned that they could sell a recording, they started collecting and selling them. And they took care that what they recorded they could sell. And people did buy it. See the Columbia music hillbilly series for example. The recorders totally looked for the most marketable acts. They got better at predicting what could sell, but commercialized recording didn’t appear later. Further, prior to recording, musicians couldn’t make a living without that same broad appeal. People don’t buy tickets to shows they don’t want to see, and patrons don’t commission works from artists they don’t like. The only artists free from commercial concerns are ones who have money from other things.