Came across the old magazine for banjo, mandolin, and guitar, the Cadenza, Volume 4, #1, 1897, p.12.

“That’s a jolly idea they have in Berlin of selling sheet music by the pound. You go to one of the shops where music is sold in this way and give them a lot of the pieces you want and they select them and lay them in a pile and weigh them out – so many pounds, so many marks and pfennings. Or, if you can afford, say, three pounds of musicm you can take one pound of sentimental, one pound of dramatic, twelve ounces of comic, and four ounces of devotional, or any other arrangement that suits your fancy. It is a great boom to the musician who is poor-not to speak of the poor musician-because under this system Wagner and Brahms and Dvorak will cost him no more than the insignificant and forgotten Smithkowski and the deluded and soft-hearted Screwleeski. And Wagner for the piano, of course being bought by the pound, can be played by the pound with good grace. The Listener recommends to our local dealers this system of selling music. – Boston Transcript.”