Music popularity

There are some popular songs that will not down no matter how tiresome they become. Therefore it is glad news to some ears to hear the following statistics : Beautiful Ohio, a waltz of the
1919 vintage has the world's record for sales, 3,500,000 copies. Next comes another waltz, Missouri, which ran about 3,000,000 copies. But only about 2,000,000 copies of the so-called Banana Song were exchanged for the public's cash.
Yet this fruity song will not down. A member of the firm which published it declared recently:
"It was the first American song hit and the first American jazz piece that ever caught on in Italy. It ran like wildfire through Germany and Austria, making the biggest popular hit in years in Vienna, supposed to be the home of catchy music. It is also the first American song to be popularized in Greece."
There is more than mere music which counts in making a song popular. Energy and persistence are large factors. Long after Bananas was the rage of the East, the West did not take to it. The publishers were determined, however. They changed managers in their Chicago branch, and notified their San Francisco and Los Angeles branches that a hit must be made at any cost.
The artificial means of stimulating popularity is chiefly that of "plugging," and this requires the service of a staff of experienced and expert "pluggers." Restaurant and orchestra bands are usually glad to play pieces published by firms with a high average of success. It is more difficult to induce vaudeville performers to use a song in their acts in big-time houses. In vaudeville houses the publishers furnish their own vocalists to sing a song, while slides illustrating it are thrown on the screen. If the piece has any merit, this sort of "plugging" will put it across. The people, hearing it often, get the idea that the song is popular.
And when they think it is popular it is popular.