Chord Chucker: Yes, there was a music industry in 1900, but it was much less centralized, and there was much less money in it. In those days, a hit song was one that sold a lot of sheet music, so that a lot of people could play it on their own pianos & sing it themselves. One may study what has happened since then in an interesting book, _How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll
[ignore that part of the title; it was stuck on by the publisher]: An Alternative History of American Popular Music_ by Elijah Wald (Oxford U.P., 2009); I am hoping to put a review of it on LiveJournal by & by. It appears that until the 1890s making money in the music business was as catch-as-catch-can thing, but then one song, "After the Ball", became extraordinarily successful, a superhit. It couldn't have happened to a nicer song, but it attracted a lot of vermin into the business.

Why they were able to take over is not clear. One is tempted to imagine that it was the exploitation of new technology, beginning with the phonograph; but it seems that the public temper had been prepared for massification well in advance of that. In 1905 G. K. Chesterton wrote: "Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better." He could stick that arrow into the encroaching depravity, but he could not stop it.