[2][3] Freund, who matriculated in 1868 at Exeter College, Oxford, but left after three years without a degree, had first been a playwright and actor.

Freund and Weil held sway as impresarios and movement leaders of American classical music.

They served as bridges between the art and the money, connecting artists, organizations, commerce, and public policy.

[13][c] In 1918, Freund and Weil helped found the Musical Alliance of the United States,[14][15] an organization that endures today.

One bid came from John Francis Majeski, Sr. (1892–1971), who in 1910 had joined the staff of Musical America and become Weil's assistant.

Majeski offered a quarter-million dollars for the pair, but was outbid by a new syndicate that also acquired four other publications (The American Architect, The Barbers' Journal, Beauty Culture, and Perfumers' Journal[17]) and consolidated them all into a new company called Trade Publications, Inc.

[18] Shields & Company and Nixon & Company, of Philadelphia, also made a public offering of ten-year 6+1⁄2 percent gold bonds of Trade Publications, that carried warrants to purchase common stock at a price that closely corresponded with the value of the stock.

The board of directors included these three plus G. Murray Hulbert, John Zollikoffer Lowe, Jr. (1884–1951), and Joseph Urban.

Howey, who had been the founding managing editor of the New York Daily Mirror, left Trade Publications on August 1, 1928, to retake his old job.

The acquisition included the publications' names, a collection of back issues, and a few months of office space in the Steinway Building.

[23] A few months before the bankruptcy auction, Weil was said to have sold his interest in Trade Publications for $200,000 (equivalent to $3,548,837 in 2023) in preferred stock.

Distraught over the loss of their fortune during the pre-Crash of 1929, then the Crash, and their subsequent inability to recover during the Great Depression, Milton and Henrietta Weil carried out a double suicide pact on May 22, 1935, leaving a note and taking the barbiturate Veronal in their room of the Hotel Scribe in the Opera District of Paris.

[33][34] As of 2022, the Majeski family continues its ninety-five year ownership of The Music Trades through its holding company, a New Jersey entity based in Englewood.

[40] Volume notes During the 1890s, the executive office for The Music Trades was at 24 Union Square East, Manhattan, New York.

From around 1897 to 1915, it was at 135 Fifth Avenue at 20th Street — which, at the time, was at the heart of the wholesale music trade district in New York City.

From about 1930 until the mid-1970s, the executive offices for The Music Trades were in Steinway Hall, 113 West 57th Street, Manhattan, New York.