Located at Rocktown History in Dayton, Virginia is the exhibit called Melodious Marketing.

People in the Nineteenth Century saw many innovations and changes occur over a short period of time. One of these innovations was a new way to read music. Companies like The Ruebush-Kieffer Company were instrumental in the promotion of shape-note music and used marketing strategies to promote their business and spread shape-note singing traditions from the people in the Shenandoah Valley throughout North America during the Nineteenth Century and into the twentieth.

• They adapted to the market by changing the language used in the songbooks from German to English.
• They paid attention to their audience and the changing music environment and innovated by implementing the new music methods (7 shapes over 4 shape method).
• As the company outgrew their small building they moved to a new building in Dayton which would be closer to the railroad for easier transportation of their books and they implemented new printing methods by getting new printing equipment.
• They cornered the market through having the first musical journal in the south and being the news source for all things shape-note related, until other companies, such as Vaughan, and Stamps-Baxter, took notice and developed their own musical journals.
• They broadened their scope by appealing to the Victorian family through consumerism, advertising, and incentives such as giving away an organ worth $150 to the “lady, gentleman, boy or girl who shall send us the greatest number of subscribers.”