The nature of broadsides

With primitive early printing presses, printing on a single sheet of paper was the easiest and most inexpensive form of printing available and for much of their history could be sold for as little as a penny.[1] They could also be cut in half lengthways to make 'broadslips', or folded to make chapbooks and where these contained several songs such collections were known as 'garlands'.[2]
An eighteenth-century broadside ballad

The earliest broadsides that survive date from the early sixteenth century, but relatively few survive before 1550.[3] From 1556 the Stationers Company in London attempted to force registration of all ballads and some 2,000 were recorded between then and 1600, but, since they were easy to print and distribute, it is likely that far more were printed.[4] Scholars often distinguish between the earlier blackletter broadsides, using larger heavy 'gothic' print, most common up to the middle of the seventeenth century, and lighter whiteletter, roman or italic typefaces, that were easier to read and became common thereafter.[5]

Broadsides were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s, probably close to their peak of popularity.[6] Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets and at fairs or by balladeers, who sang the songs printed on their broadsides in an attempt to attract customers.[7] In Britain broadsides began to decline in popularity in the seventeenth century as initially chapbooks and later bound books and newspapers, began to replace them, until they appear to have died out in the nineteenth century.[6] They lasted longer in Ireland, and although never produced in such huge numbers in North America, they were significant in the eighteenth century and provided an important medium of propaganda, on both sides, in the American War of Independence.[8]

Most of the knowledge of broadsides in England comes from the fact that several significant figures chose to collect them, including Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724), in what became Roxburghe Ballads.[9] In the eighteenth century there were several printed collections, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20), Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), and Joseph Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784).[9] In Scotland similar work was undertaken by figures including Robert Burns and Walter Scott in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03).[9] One of the largest collections was made by Sir Frederick Madden who collected some 30,000 songs now in the 'Madden Collection' in the Cambridge University Library [1].
some of them were folk songs some of them were popular, so some of them were folk songs some of them were pop songs some of them were new songs, for example the folkestone murder, the red barn murder,turpin hero,to name but a few.
then we have Tom Armstrong the pitman poet, His works were printed at the time on chapbooks and broadsheets which sold for a halfpenny or a penny each.
Armstrongs new songs includedThis material includes :-

Blanchland Murder, (The)
Bobby En Bet
Borth E Th' Lad, (Th') - (or The Birth of the Lad)
Cat Pie, (The)
Consett Choir Calamity, (The) – (of Saturday 26 August 1911)
Corry's Rat
Dorham Jail - (or Durham Gaol)
Durham Strike, (The) – (more correctly The Durham Lock-out)
Funny Nuaims It Tanfeeld Pit – (or The funny names of the folk at Tanfield)
Gateshead Poor Childrens' Trip To Stanley
Geordie Broon
Ghost Thit' Anted Bunty, (The) - (or The Ghost that Haunted Bunty)
Hedgehog Pie, (The)
Jack Reckonen - (or Jack's Reckoning)
Kaiser And The War, (The)
Kelloe Disaster
Marla Hill Ducks - (or Marley Hill Ducks)
Murder of Mary Donnelly
Neglectful Sally
Nue Ralewae Te Anfeeld Plane, (Th') - (or The new railway to Annfield Plain)
Oakey's Keeker
Oakey's Strike - (or The Oakey Strike Evictions)
Old Dolly Cook and Her Family
Old Folks Tea at West Stanley
Old Men's Trip, (The) - From the Victoria Club, West Stanley
Picture Hall at Tantobie, (The)
Poam To The Kaiser, (A)
Prudent Pitman, (The)
Row Between Th' Cages, (Th'), - (or The Row 'Atween the Cages)
Row I' Th' Guuttor, (Th')
Sewing Meeting, (A)
Sheel Raw Flud, (The)
Skeul Bord Man, (Th') - (or The Skuil (or school) Board Man
Sooth Medomsley Strike, (The) - (or The South Medomsley Strike)
Stanla Market – (or Stanley Market)
Summer Flies, (The)
Tanfeeld Lee Silvor Modil Band – (ot The Tanfield Lea Silver Model Band)
Tanfield Braike
Tantobie Wednesday Football Team
Tantobie Workmen's Club Oxo Banquet
Tommy The Poet Signed On
Trimdon Grange Explosion, (The) - (or The Trimdon Grange Disaster)
Trip From Tantobie Union Club to Jarrow Excelsior Club, (The)
Unhappy Couple, (The)
Wheelbarrow Man, (Th')