List of best-selling sheet music
Wikimedia list article
This list contains some of the best-selling songs in terms of sheet music sales in music publishing history, with copies reportedly of over 3 million. Figures on sheet music —as with record sales— reported by publishing firms were not always reliable.
In the United States, before "Oh! Susanna" (1848) no American song had sold more than five thousand copies of sheet music. Sales by 1852 of 75,000 copies of Stephen Foster's "Massa's in the Cold Ground" was considered "phenomenal" since music publishers did not try to promote songs. The first song to became "popular" through a national advertising campaign was "My Grandfather's Clock" in 1876. Mass production of pianos in the late-19th century helped boost sheet music sales. Toward the end of the century, during the Tin Pan Alley era, sheet music was sold by dozens and even hundreds of publishing companies. The sheet music industry also suffered due to the considerable sale of pirated reprints and lead sheets.
Reports vary widely to confirm the first million-seller song in sheet music; examples include "When This Cruel War Is Over" (1863), "After the Ball" (by 1892 or 1893), and "Funiculì, Funiculà" in 1880.
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