Asong plugger orsong demonstrator is an individual who promotes music tomusicians,record labels, and customers. Song pluggers work for a music publishing company or operate independently. The function of the role has evolved as advances inmusic technology changed the music industry over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a song plugger was avocalist orpiano player employed in the early 20th century bydepartment stores,music stores and song publishers to promote and help sell new sheet music. Prior to high-quality recorded music onphonograph records, sheet music sales were the sole measurement of a song's popularity. Music publisherFrank Harding has been credited with innovating the sales method.[1] Typically, the pianist sat on themezzanine level of a store.[citation needed] When patrons wanted to hear the music before buying, a clerk would send the music up to the demonstrator to be played.[2]
Although the terms are often used interchangeably, those who worked in department and music stores were most often known as "song demonstrators", while those who worked directly for music publishers were called "song pluggers."[citation needed]
Notable musicians and composers who had worked as song pluggers includedGeorge Gershwin,[1][3]Ron Roker,[citation needed]Jerome Kern,[4]Irving Berlin,[1]Lil Hardin Armstrong,[5]Irving Mills,[6] andCole Porter.[7] Film executiveHarry Cohn had also been a song plugger.[8]
Later,[when?] the term was used to describe individuals who would pitch new music to performers, withThe New York Times describing such examples asFreddy Bienstock performing a job in which he was "pitching new material tobandleaders and singers".[9] In1952,Life writer Ernest Havemann noted the following:
There are about 600 song-pluggers in the U.S.; they have their ownunion; they are powerful enough to bar all outsiders; and they command fees up to $35,000 a year [worth $414,430 today] plus unlimited expense accounts. Their job is to persuade the record companies to use songs, put out by their publishing houses, and the radio stationdisk jockeys to play the records."[10]
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Song pluggers remain a part of the music industry, serving a similar function to a professional manager bypromoting new music to recording artists and record labels.[11][12] They are often hired on retainer, and can work for a record label or operate independently.[13][14]
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