When Rock’n’Roll started sheet music was the big seller. They had just introduced vinyl as a medium.
You’ve got the right idea, but I’d like to clear up this timeline a little. While LPs and 45s made from vinyl were still new at the dawn of Rock’n’Roll, recorded music had already been commercially available for about 50 years in the form of lacquer and shellac 78s and cylinders. Recorded music sales actually surpassed sheet music way back in the mid 1920s. A lot of the pre-rock recorded music was classical, traditional, or tame popular jazz like foxtrots which, like you pointed out, was a major contrast to Rock’n’Roll in the world of “white people music.”
Another part of what made Rock’n’Roll different from the perspective of commercial success was that it was targeted at teenagers. It was a relatively new idea in the post-war years by companies like Coca-Cola to target products and advertising directly to kids and hook lifelong customers early on.
You’ve got the right idea, but I’d like to clear up this timeline a little. While LPs and 45s made from vinyl were still new at the dawn of Rock’n’Roll, recorded music had already been commercially available for about 50 years in the form of lacquer and shellac 78s and cylinders. Recorded music sales actually surpassed sheet music way back in the mid 1920s. A lot of the pre-rock recorded music was classical, traditional, or tame popular jazz like foxtrots which, like you pointed out, was a major contrast to Rock’n’Roll in the world of “white people music.”
Another part of what made Rock’n’Roll different from the perspective of commercial success was that it was targeted at teenagers. It was a relatively new idea in the post-war years by companies like Coca-Cola to target products and advertising directly to kids and hook lifelong customers early on.