Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" Becomes First Sheet Music to Sell One Million Copies

Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," published in 1899, became the first piece of sheet music by any composer to sell one million copies, achieving that milestone around 1900. The ragtime composition established Joplin as the "King of Ragtime" and brought syncopated African American musical forms into mainstream American and international culture. It fundamentally shaped the trajectory of American popular music in the twentieth century.