Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
including American and world history, art, business, cities, countries, cultures, customs,
film, global conflicts, international relations, literature, music, philosophy, religion,
sports, and theater. Written by experts, all contain highly informative introductory essays
on the topic and detailed chronologies that, in some cases, cover vast historical time
periods but still manage to heavily feature more recent events.
Brief A–Z entries describe the main people, events, politics, social issues, institutions,
and policies that make the topic unique, and entries are cross-referenced for ease of
browsing. Extensive bibliographies are divided into several general subject areas, provid-
ing excellent access points for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more.
Additionally, maps, photographs, and appendixes of supplemental information aid high
school and college students doing term papers or introductory research projects. In short,
the historical dictionaries are the perfect starting point for anyone looking to research in
these fields.
HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF
PROFESSIONS AND INDUSTRIES
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Acknowledgments vii
Reader’s Note ix
Chronology xv
Introduction 1
THE DICTIONARY 33
Bibliography 343
v
Acknowledgments
vii
Reader’s Note
The focus of this dictionary is on the American music industry. The authors
have chosen to emphasize people, organizations, industry terminology, con-
cepts, and practices to provide the reader with an overview of how the music
industry has evolved. While the introductory essay describes the role of
music in the colonial era, the period immediately before the American Civil
War represents the commencement of what would become the music indus-
try we know today, with music managers taking responsibility for selling
music in various forms. Although an attempt is made to cover the rich diver-
sity of musical styles, the focus of this volume is primarily the popular music
industry, as it has been and remains the greatest portion of the American
music marketplace measured by revenue. We have also included a range of
music-industry-specific terminology relating to contractual relationships and
agreements. Biographical coverage is representative rather than comprehen-
sive since many more individuals in the country have contributed to the
development of the music industry than could be included in these pages.
Decisions as to which entries would be included were made solely by the
authors.
To help orient the reader, it may be useful to consider the three dominant
forms of music dissemination that evolved and which are discussed in this
dictionary. They are the era of printed music, roughly spanning the late 17th
to the early 20th centuries; the era of recording and broadcasting, covering
the 1920s to the 2000s; and the era of the internet between 1990 and the
present day. Each in its time was the most significant pipeline to provide
music to consumers and reward music creators and managers for their ef-
forts.
How the Billboard charts are calculated has evolved in the more than 100
years since they began being published. Numerical ranking originally relied
on reported sales of sheet music, records, and radio airplay. Following the
evolution of music delivery systems in the 21st century, the charts are now
tabulated using the earlier metrics plus track equivalent albums (downloads)
and streaming equivalent albums. Chart positions referenced are based on
whichever measurement methodology was utilized at the relevant time.
Specific data regarding how many records an artist has sold over the course of
his or her career is subject to some debate as varying sources have often utilized
different methods to calculate sales totals (e.g., record company reported sales
ix
x • READER’S NOTE
versus Nielsen SoundScan verified sales). When more than one sales total is
reported for a particular artist, we have erred on the side of caution and
generally reported the lower number.
In order to facilitate the rapid and efficient location of information and to
make this book as useful a reference tool as possible, extensive cross-refer-
ences have been provided in the dictionary section. Within individual entries,
terms that have their own entries are in bold face type the first time they
appear. Related terms that do not appear in the text are indicated by See also
references. See refers to other entries that deal with this topic.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
xi
xii • ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
CMJ College Music Journal
CMRRA Canadian Mechanical Rights Reproduction Agency
CRB Copyright Royalty Board
CRIA Canadian Recording Industry Association
CWA Communication Workers of America
DART Digital Audio Recording Technology Act (1995)
DAW digital audio workstation
DIY do it yourself
DJ disk jockey, deejay, on-air radio host, or turntablist
DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)
DPD Digital Phonorecord Delivery
DRM digital rights management
DSP digital service provider
EDC Electric Daisy Carnival (festival)
EDM electronic dance music
EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation
ESA Entertainment Software Association
FMC Future of Music Coalition
GMA Gospel Music Association
GUI graphical user interface
HFA Harry Fox Agency
IAWM International Alliance for Women in Music
IATSE International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving
Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts
IEBA International Entertainment Buyers Association
IFPI International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
IMA Indie Managers Association
ISME International Society for Music Education
ISP internet service provider
ISPA International Society for the Performing Arts
ISRC International Song Recording Code
LOC Library of Congress
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS • xiii
MIDEM Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale
(conference)
MMF Music Managers Forum
MOR middle-of-the-road
MP3 MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Audio Layer III, compressed audio file
format
MPA Music Publishers Association
MPAA Motion Picture Association of America
MPEG Moving Pictures Experts Group
MPTF Music Performance Trust Fund
MTC Meet the Composer
NABET National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians
NACA National Association of Campus Activities
NAfME National Association for Music Education
NAMM National Association of Music Merchants
NAPAMA North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents
NARAS National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences
(Recording Academy)
NARIP National Association of Record Industry Professionals
NATS National Association of Teachers of Singing
NMPA National Music Publishers’ Association
NSAI Nashville Songwriters Association International
P2P peer-to-peer file sharing
P&D pressing and distribution agreement
PPD published priced to dealers/distributors
PRO performing rights organization
PRS performing rights society
RIAA Recording Industry Association of America
ROI return on investment
ROW rest of world
SAG Screen Actors Guild
SCL Society of Composers and Lyricists
SDMI Secure Digital Music Initiative
xiv • ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
SEA streaming equivalent album
SESAC Society of European Stage Authors and Composers
SKU stock keeping unit
SPARS Society of Professional Audio Recording Studios
SXSW South by Southwest (festival)
TEA track equivalent album
UCC Uniform Code Council
UGC user-generated content
UPC Universal Product Code (i.e., barcode)
URL Uniform Resource Locater
UX user experience
VJ video host or veejay
VLA Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
Chronology
xv
xvi • CHRONOLOGY
1956 Elvis Presley performs on a number of national TV broadcasts, some of
which generate hundreds of thousands of letters from citizens concerned that
his suggestive dance moves are harmful to teens.
1960 RCA Records begins the practice of releasing all singles in both mono
and stereo (two-channel) formats, heralding the move toward better and bet-
ter sound quality in the coming decades.
1961 Motown Records earns its initial number one hit, “Please, Mr. Post-
man” by the Marvelettes, the first of 20 number ones it achieves during the
1960s by artists such as the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops,
Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, and Marvin Gaye.
1962 Conductor Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic give the
debut performance on 23 September in Philharmonic Hall at New York
City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The concert is broadcast live
across the nation.
1963 Bob Dylan releases the recording “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a song that
becomes closely associated with the civil rights movement. Dylan’s songs
epitomize the socially conscious role many musicians would take in the
1960s to challenge the status quo and question authority with respect to
perceived societal ills.
1964 The Beatles’ 9 February appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is
beamed into homes all across America and becomes a defining moment in
American popular culture. It signifies the start of the so-called British Inva-
sion, which is characterized by dozens of British bands finding chart success
in the United States. By 4 April 1964, the Beatles have achieved the unprece-
dented feat of holding the top five positions on the Billboard “Hot 100”
chart.
1965 The British Invasion continues to crest, with four of the year’s top five
hit singles in the United States performed by the Beatles or the Rolling
Stones, who also attain similar success around the world. The Beatles’ album
Rubber Soul pushes the boundaries of pop music, incorporating the sitar and
including concept songs that move beyond the standard pop fare that the
group rode to global fame.
1966 The Beach Boys, a California surf rock group, release the album Pet
Sounds to critical acclaim but only modest commercial success. Using a
variety of studio musicians and instruments, the group’s Brian Wilson pro-
duces an imaginative, unique album that will greatly influence future musi-
cians.
CHRONOLOGY • xvii
1967 The Monterey Pop Festival, held on 16–18 June, is the first major
international music festival and provides a blueprint for artists and promoters
to emulate in the ensuing growth of the live music industry over the coming
decades. The festival’s music and overall experience is ably documented in
the motion picture Monterey Pop. The Doors’ single “Light My Fire” sells
more than one million copies and launches the group into superstar status,
even though their mercurial lead singer, Jim Morrison, publicly uses profan-
ity, leading to indecency charges.
1968 The rock musical Hair opens on Broadway, and songs from the musical
cross over onto the mainstream pop music charts. In response to the tragic
death of Martin Luther King Jr., the cast performs at the ensuing march on
Washington, DC, along with many other notable artists. Legendary impresa-
rio Bill Graham opens the Fillmore East concert venue in New York City,
based on the original Fillmore in San Francisco, a music and cultural mecca
for artists and fans of the era.
1969 Woodstock is a music and art festival held on 15–18 August in Upstate
New York that would come broadly to symbolize the positive aspects of the
era’s counterculture, painting it as a unifying, socially conscious youth
movement. With more than 400,000 people in attendance, the festival is
documented through a film and album of the same name. The Who release
the rock opera Tommy to popular and critical acclaim, demonstrating the
validity of the concept album on a grand scale, a model that will be followed
by other groups in the ensuing decade. The Altamont Music Festival is
staged by the Rolling Stones and billed as a free concert near San Francisco.
However, it tragically ends in the death of four attendees, one at the hands of
the Hells Angels motorcycle club, who were hired by the Stones to provide
security.
1970 Simon & Garfunkel release their final album as a duo, Bridge Over
Troubled Waters, which goes on to win six Grammy Awards and top the
charts for six weeks in United States. In the UK, the Isle of Wight Festival,
26–30 August, is attended by an estimated audience of 600,000 fans, making
it one of the largest music festival audiences ever.
1971 Ex-Beatle George Harrison puts together the first large-scale all-star
charity rock concert on 1 August, titled the Concert for Bangladesh, to pro-
vide relief for the horrific conditions present in that region. The sellout event
held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, along with the subsequent
hit album and motion picture, eventually raises $12 million for charitable
causes in Bangladesh and provides a model for future cause-based mega-
events.
xviii • CHRONOLOGY
1972 U.S. Congress creates the sound recording copyright to provide consis-
tency at the federal level for all original sound recordings. Opryland Theme
Park opens in Nashville and celebrates country music, one of the first U.S.
tourist attractions based on a specific music genre or region.
1973 The British group Pink Floyd releases their album Dark Side of the
Moon, which goes on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. It
remains on the Billboard chart for 741 consecutive weeks. As a result of the
oil shortage, vinyl to make albums is scarce and some record labels have to
delay album releases during the fourth quarter as a result. The Summer Jam
Music Festival, held on 28 July at Watkins Glen, New York, draws more
than 600,000 ticketed attendees.
1974 Demonstrating the earning power of a classic song, the 1954 recording
of “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & the Comets reenters the Bill-
board charts due to its use in the motion picture American Graffiti and the
television series Happy Days. ABBA wins the Eurovision song contest with
the song “Waterloo,” launching their global career.
1976 U.S. district court finds that George Harrison most likely subconscious-
ly copied the musical elements of the Chiffons 1963 hit “He’s So Fine” in the
creation of his worldwide hit “My Sweet Lord.”
1977 The movie Saturday Night Fever is released. It effectively pairs a
youth-oriented plotline with a pop music soundtrack album to great acclaim.
This multiple-media (film and soundtrack) release helps further develop the
industry practice of cross-media marketing. The album spends 24 weeks atop
the Billboard charts and a total of 210 weeks on the charts, eventually regis-
tering more than 15 million units in sales while helping to establish disco as
the dominant pop music genre of the time.
1979 The song “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang is released and
becomes a hit outside of the major label system, selling two million copies.
More importantly, it is the harbinger of a new musical and cultural phenome-
non—hip hop.
1980 The Sony Walkman, a portable personal cassette player, goes on sale in
the United States in June. It weighs only 14 ounces and comes with head-
phones and a leather case. The Walkman has no external speaker and is the
first music player designed exclusively for private, portable listening. Its
runaway success confirms substantial consumer interest in personal listening
devices. The Walkman is the first in what becomes a succession of similarly
functioning personal portable music players, including the Discman, MP3
players, the iPod, and smart phones.
CHRONOLOGY • xix
1981 On 1 August, MTV broadcasts for the first time on cable television in
the United States, playing music videos 24 hours a day. The videos are
introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and used as promotional material for
artists’ albums. Videos soon become a necessity to market mainstream music
acts, while MTV expands its reach to include dozens of nations around the
world. By the early 1990s, MTV begins to transition to airing original reality
shows not related to music videos. MTV continues to regularly air videos on
the show Total Request Live, which ends in 2008.
1982 Michael Jackson’s Thriller is released in the United States on 30 No-
vember. This album will go on to become the world’s most successful album,
with sales estimated at more than 65 million units. Notably, it is lauded
equally as an artistic success, earning a record eight Grammy Awards. The
first 50 commercial compact disc titles are released in Japan on 1 October.
1983 On 2 March, compact discs go on sale in the United States. Although at
their introduction the discs and players carry premium pricing compared to
vinyl albums or cassettes, the new format quickly grows in popularity and
supplants other record formats by the late 1980s.
1985 Live Aid is held on 13 July, which brings together dozens of acts
performing first at Wembley Stadium in London and afterward at JFK Sta-
dium in Philadelphia to raise awareness and funds for famine relief in Africa.
An audience of 1.5 billion watches the performances in 150 countries using
newly developed satellite broadcast technology.
1986 The first-ever Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony occurs
on 30 January. Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles were among the
performers inducted.
1987 The first joint rock concert to promote peace between the United States
and Russia takes place on 4 July, the American Independence Day, in Mos-
cow. Performers include James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Santana, and the Soviet
rock group Autograph.
1988 Michael Jackson’s fifth single from his album Bad, “Dirty Diana,”
enters the charts. This makes him the first and only male solo act in history to
have five consecutive charting singles from one album on the Billboard “Hot
100” to date.
1990 On 16 April, a large-scale charity concert is held at London’s Wembley
Stadium, with over 72,000 attendees. The event celebrates the end of South
Africa’s policy of apartheid and the release of South African leader Nelson
Mandela, a human rights activist who was jailed for 27 years by the white
majority leaders in that country. It is broadcast to more than 60 countries.
Performers include Lou Reed, Anita Baker, Chrissie Hynde, Tracy Chapman,
xx • CHRONOLOGY
Bonnie Raitt, Natalie Cole, Neil Young, and Peter Gabriel. However, the
headliner is Mandela himself, with a videotaped 45-minute prerecorded
speech airing during the concert.
1991 The Billboard “Top 200” album chart now includes actual sales data
monitored electronically by Nielsen SoundScan. The first edition of enter-
tainment attorney Donald S. Passman’s All You Need to Know about the
Music Business is published, revealing for the first time to musicians and the
general public the inner workings of the music and recording industry, in-
cluding royalty and contract provisions for recording artists.
1992 Nirvana’s Nevermind album hits number one on the Billboard chart.
The group’s runaway success solidifies grunge, a previously underground
musical genre of the counterculture. This music will go on throughout the
1990s to become mainstream music around the world.
1993 UK band Depeche Mode attempts one of the first online open forums
with fans via a question-and-answer session hosted by leading internet ser-
vice provider America Online (AOL). Technical difficulties plague the event,
the worst of which being people not able to log into the session, including the
host band members.
1994 Pearl Jam files a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department against
Ticketmaster, claiming they have a virtual monopoly on the concert ticket
business resulting in unreasonably high fees for the band’s fans. After a year-
long federal antitrust probe, the investigation is dropped.
1995 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum opens in Cleveland, Ohio.
The physical museum’s opening is commemorated with a benefit concert that
features unique collaborations, such as Chuck Berry with Bruce Springsteen
and the E Street Band, and a diverse lineup of performers, including Bob
Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Johnny Cash.
1996 The Broadway rock musical Rent has its first public performance off
Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop. It is based on Puccini’s opera
La Boehme and addresses controversial topics such as the ongoing AIDS
crisis. Rent goes on to become a smash hit, running for 12 years on Broad-
way and grossing an estimated $610 million, including U.S. and overseas
tours. It becomes one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama.
1997 The Verve release their album Urban Hymns and end up in a legal
dispute with the Rolling Stones over hit single “Bittersweet Symphony.”
While the group initially pays for the rights to sample the Stones’ 1965 song
“The Last Time,” the Rolling Stones subsequently sue the group for copy-
CHRONOLOGY • xxi
right infringement, arguing the Verve’s usage is much more significant than
that which had been approved. The Verve end up settling out of court, giving
Jagger and Richards full songwriting credit and royalties.
1998 The U.S. Copyright Term Extension Act is signed into law, which
provides rights holders and the entertainment industry 20 additional years of
exclusive rights to any work created after 1923 that was still under copyright
protection on 27 October. It also aligns American copyright term with that of
the European Union.
1999 The Recording Industry Association of America introduces new Di-
amond album certification, in addition to the preexisting Gold and Platinum
certifications. Diamond indicates 10 million copies sold, or the streaming
equivalent. U.S. College student Shawn Fanning creates the Napster peer-to-
peer file sharing software that allows music fans worldwide to find and
download music without authorization by the rights holders.
2000 NSYNC’s No Strings Attached album sells 2.4 million copies in its first
week. Pandora Radio is launched, using the first detailed analysis of each
song’s musical attributes to create individualized personal radio stations for
each subscriber.
2001 Napster shuts down its peer-to-peer file sharing service under court
order after losing its appeal. The first iPod is released. The music industry
responds to the 11 September attacks with a series of benefit events in the
United States.
2002 Music talent show American Idol premieres on prime-time television,
going on to become a significant television ratings success while creating a
direct pipeline for talented performers to the music industry.
2003 Apple’s iTunes music store debuts, selling one million songs its first
week. Celine Dion begins a 700-performance, five-year residency in Las
Vegas, establishing a new live entertainment paradigm for top-tier artists.
MySpace debuts as one of the first music-sharing sites to be widely adopted
by artists and music fans.
2004 Madonna kicks off her Re-Invention Tour, hitting 56 cities and gross-
ing $125 million in receipts.
2005 Guitar Hero video game debuts, leading to a surge in interactive music-
based games. This results in a new category of music licensing for interactive
music games. Sony/BMG recalls 15 million compact discs that carry a hid-
den program that installs anticopying software onto consumers’ personal
computers without their permission.
xxii • CHRONOLOGY
2006 The iTunes music store sells its one billionth download. Rock band OK
Go debuts “Here It Goes Again,” a quirky video featuring the members of the
band lip-synching while dancing on treadmills. It becomes one of the first
viral music videos to demonstrate new video sharing platform YouTube’s
reach. The video accumulates more than 50 million views, landing the song
on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart. Sixteen-year-old Taylor Swift’s epony-
mous debut album is released, earning favorable reviews and resonating with
teens and parents as it goes on to sell more than five million copies.
2007 Radiohead release their album In Rainbows via the internet using a
“pay what you want” model. This challenges the century-old model of record
labels controlling record releases. Disney debuts the music-centric cable mo-
vie High School Musical 2, attracting 17.2 million viewers, making it the
most watched basic cable broadcast up to that time. Disney uses synergy to
market soundtrack albums, merch, clothing, sheet music, and other related
products to further enhance the project’s earnings.
2008 Hip hop star Lil’ Wayne releases Tha Carter III, selling more than one
million copies the first week. Eventually earning triple-platinum sales, the
album is the best seller for the year, demonstrating the sustained audience for
hip hop.
2009 Michael Jackson announces his final concert performances, the This Is
It series of 50 concerts to be held at London’s O2 Arena. All 50 shows sell
out in less than four hours. Tragically, Jackson dies of an overdose of pain
medication during the rehearsals.
2010 Women take center stage at the 52nd Grammy Awards, with Beyoncé
taking home six Grammys, Taylor Swift four, and Rihanna, Colbie Caillat,
and Lady Gaga two apiece. Lady Gaga becomes the first woman to chart six
consecutive number one singles on the Billboard chart.
2011 Spotify launches in the United States. The guerilla marketing strategy
of offering full-length albums for free via the internet to build a critical mass
among fans before releasing a commercial album continues, as Frank
Ocean’s Nostalgia Ultra earns rave reviews and leads to a record deal with
Def Jam Records. Adele’s album 21 is released, going on to attain Diamond
status overall and notably selling six million album downloads in the process.
2012 Major record labels continue to consolidate as Universal Music’s deal
to acquire EMI Records is finalized, leaving only three major labels. Inde-
pendent artist Amanda Palmer demonstrates the power of crowdfunding
when she uses Kickstarter to raise more than one million dollars directly
from fans for her next project.
CHRONOLOGY • xxiii
2013 Jay-Z and Samsung partner in a reported $30 million deal to deliver
exclusive first-week access to his new album, Magna Carta . . . Holy Grail,
to consumers owning a Samsung smart phone, eliminating the middleman for
one of the most anticipated releases of the year.
2014 Taylor Swift’s album 1989 is the best-selling release of the year, going
triple platinum. Music fans continue to boost the live music sector, with an
estimated 35 percent of all consumer music expenditures in 2014 going to
attend concerts, while music festival attendance expands by 34 percent, with
a reported 30 million Americans attending one or more music festivals. Bill-
board announces it will include data from both music streaming and down-
load services in its chart calculations, a nod to the multiple streams consu-
mers now use to discover and enjoy music.
2015 Adele breaks sales records with the release of her album 25, selling
more than 3.38 million copies in its first week of release. The Recording
Industry Association of America reports that for the first time record industry
revenues from music streaming surpass the sale of recorded music, a trend
likely to grow exponentially as more consumers adopt media streaming over
ownership. In a landmark copyright case, the estate of Marvin Gaye is
awarded a $7.4 million judgment citing infringement by Pharrell Williams
and Robin Thicke for their song “Blurred Lines.”
2016 According to Nielsen Research, the most popular album of the year
relies primarily on streaming platforms to reach its listeners. Drake’s Views
(in its first week) charts more than one million combined units via a blend of
album sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming equivalent albums. It
accumulates a total of 245 million streams its first week, while notching eight
additional weeks during which the album has more than 100 million streams.
2017 Crowdfunding gains broader acceptance and specifically in the music
industry, as numerous artists develop and launch campaigns using platforms
such as Patreon, Pledge Music, and IndieGoGo to create a viable means to
gain financial support. In many cases, this revenue replaces revenue formerly
earned through record sales. When successful, this strategy allows crowd-
funded artists to avoid signing away creative and business control of their
careers to third parties. The current global marketplace for money raised by
crowdfunding ventures totals the equivalent of seven billion dollars.
Introduction
1
2 • INTRODUCTION
1786, the Stoughton (Massachusetts) Musical Society was formed and began
a long tradition of community musical societies and associations to support
the musical arts across America. It was during the last two decades of the
18th century that music began to be published and sold in America. At that
time, a number of immigrant composer-publishers, most notably Benjamin
Carr, George Gilfert, and James Hewitt, opened music publishing houses in
Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New York.
By 1790, the first formal legislation was created in America to protect
original works such as books, maps, and charts. While music was not specifi-
cally taken into account in the Copyright Act of 1790, evidence shows music
was routinely submitted for copyright protection and was classified as a
“book.” Other forms of artistic expression, such as paintings or drawings,
were not protected. The newly independent American leaders based the
Copyright Act of 1790 extensively on England’s 1709 Statute of Anne. The
Copyright Act of 1790 required authors to register their original works with
the Library of Congress and to provide copies, which would be deposited in
designated repositories such as the Library of Congress. The original term
under the Copyright Act of 1790 was 14 years, with a provision for an author
still alive at the end of the copyright term to renew it for 14 additional years.
Throughout the first half of the 1800s, music continued to represent an
important place in American society, both through its presence in religious
services as well as in secular music performances. The Copyright Act of
1831 allowed for the statutory protection of printed musical works for the
first time. Additionally, the law extended the term of the original copyright to
28 years with an option to renew it for an additional 14 years.
Popular songs grew increasingly important to the social fabric of
American life in the mid-19th century. One songwriter, Stephen Foster, pro-
vides an example of how popular songs traveled across America with every-
day persons. His best-known songs, such as “Oh, Susanna,” were sung in
classrooms, dance halls, and parlors across the growing nation.
One of the most popular types of entertainment in the 19th century was the
minstrel show, which mimicked what were believed to be signature aspects
of African American culture through songs, dance routines, and skits. Min-
strelsy, as the practice is now referred to, was at first performed exclusively
by whites, who would use burnt cork to blacken their faces before each
performance, hence the phrase “performing in blackface.” White minstrelsy
performers studied African Americans making music, dancing, and pro-
claiming and then adapted this black culture for audiences across America.
Dozens of minstrelsy troupes crisscrossed the young nation, giving perfor-
mances wherever an audience could be found. One group, the Virginia Min-
strels, became the model for many other groups with an instrumentation of
fiddle, banjo, bones (hand percussion), and tambourine. Their 1843 perfor-
INTRODUCTION • 3
mance in New York City was a resounding success and led to a tour that
same year to England. Dan Emmett, the group’s fiddler, is credited with
writing the song “Dixie,” which became another iconic popular song.
After the Civil War, black performers began to take part in minstrelsy
shows in greater numbers, and by 1900 African American musicians, singers,
dancers, and comedians were well-known contributors to the popular music
industry of the time. Minstrelsy is important to note in the history of the
music industry, as it is one of the first examples of members of one racial or
ethnic group appropriating the cultural traditions and musical idioms of an-
other and profiting from that use. Another term that is often applied to such
practice is “borrowing,” and it is a consistent thread throughout the history of
American popular music and culture, indeed through nearly all of music
history. By the late 1800s, minstrelsy shows had largely evolved into vaude-
ville performances, which offered a greater variety of entertainment, includ-
ing comedy, trained animal acts, juggling, ventriloquists, song and dance,
acrobats, musical numbers, and even the occasional pugilist or criminal.
Vaudeville performers toured the country to the thousands of well-estab-
lished theaters, which were owned by a few large impresarios. Through the
use of railroads for travel and telegraph and telephone for booking, the
vaudeville circuit became a tightly run movement that employed more than
12,000 performers. At its height, vaudeville was the most popular American
entertainment, with theaters hosting performances two or three times each
day. Importantly, music publishers in New York City competed with each
other to form relationships with vaudeville promoters in order to provide
publishers’ latest songs a national platform and effectively boost sheet music
sales. Often, inducements ranging from free beer to monetary incentives
were used to sweeten the deal, a practice that has continued in various forms
throughout the history of the music industry.
Classical music provided an alternative to popular music, with the New
York Philharmonic Society’s founding in 1842 marking the nation’s first
standing orchestra dedicated to performing concert hall repertoire of the era.
In 1891, a grand new concert hall opened in New York City, funded by
philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The New York Philharmonic would go on
to present concerts at Carnegie Hall for nearly six decades. A number of
other cities across America championed the arts, and in particular symphonic
music, establishing permanent professional orchestras in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. These included Cincinnati (1872), Boston (1882), Chi-
cago (1891), San Francisco (1911), Los Angeles (1919), and Seattle (1926),
to name a few. With the increase in professional orchestras, the need for
well-trained musicians grew, which led to the founding of a number of music
schools, often referred to as conservatories, with specialized curriculum de-
signed to prepare musicians for full-time work in the concert hall.
4 • INTRODUCTION
Opera became an important component of America’s musical landscape in
the mid-18th century, with New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco each
proving that audiences would support this more visual performance medium,
even when it was sung in Italian, French, or German. The founding of New
York City’s Metropolitan Opera in 1883 inaugurated a new era of support
and success for this largely European form. Importantly, the most popular
arias from operas were extremely successful in selling sheet music, which
then broadened the general public’s interest in operatic performance.
The year 1909 was pivotal in the history of the American music industry.
This was the year that the United States Congress passed the Copyright Act
of 1909, a watershed moment in the modern era for composers, musicians,
songwriters, and music managers of all types. Prior to the 1909 Copyright
Act, composers would create new works and offer them to publishers, who
6 • INTRODUCTION
would then create a printed edition of the new work and sell it through
various means. While the composers and songwriters most often received a
share of earnings from the sale of the printed editions, referred to as sheet
music, new music reproduction technologies, including recording cylinders
and piano rolls, were rapidly becoming popular with the public and were not
covered under prior copyright law. With the passage of the Copyright Act of
1909, Congress provided clear direction that music creators should be fairly
compensated for uses that relied on mechanical reproduction of music. In
1914, five years after the act was put into law, the American Society of
Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was created, in large part to
represent the interests of music creators and advocate for the best possible
compensation whenever ASCAP members’ music was publicly performed or
sold.
While the many inventions of the 19th century, such as the steam engine, the
telegraph, and the boom in railroad and highway transportation, were instru-
mental in America’s westward expansion, a number of other inventions
would have significant repercussions for the music industry. Starting with the
development of the telephone by Alexander G. Bell in 1876, followed in
1877 by Thomas A. Edison’s cylinder phonograph recording system, and
then by the invention of the player piano, which could reproduce the latest
popular songs using a specially modified piano that relied on a perforated roll
of paper “read” by the instrument, which then played the song automatically,
new technologies were poised to expand the market for music in America. In
1887, a German immigrant named Emile Berliner filed a patent for his gram-
ophone, a great improvement over Edison’s fragile wax cylinder, as Berlin-
er’s new system allowed for the mass production of music discs, rather than
cylinders, which had to be produced one at a time. Berliner’s vision of how
recordings could be mass-produced and distributed became the basis for the
modern-day record industry, which thrived for nearly a century selling discs
of one format or another as the primary distribution medium for popular
music.
A host of new record companies sprouted up to meet the growing demand
of consumers for sound recordings—no musical ability in the family was
required to now enjoy music in the home, either via a record or by playing
the latest popular song on the player piano. Music consumption was now
occurring on a grand scale without a musician present. Edison, Victor, and
Columbia were the dominant labels in this time period, largely focusing on
INTRODUCTION • 7
concert hall repertoire that included arias, solos, and some popular songs. By
the 1920s, new music, which began to exhibit a racial and cultural diversity
not normally found in a concert hall setting, began to appear on records from
small record labels such as Okeh, Black Swan, and Black Patti. These inno-
vative labels sought out new talent that didn’t hew to Tin Pan Alley conven-
tions for release to the growing audience of record buyers wishing to hear
new music that might be more aligned with their own cultural identity.
Among the music finding its way onto early sound recordings was the
fresh new sound that would come to be known as jazz. It was based on a
mixture of folk sources, brass band repertoire, ragtime, and the blues and was
perfectly suited to dancing in social halls and bars. Between 1895 and 1920,
a number of major cities such as Memphis, St. Louis, and Atlanta developed
audiences for the new music. However, it was in New Orleans where jazz
really blossomed, and its musicians soon migrated northward via riverboats
plying the Mississippi River. By 1923, Chicago had become the epicenter of
jazz in the Midwest, with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring a young
Louis Armstrong, one of the most popular groups of the time. By the late
1930s, America’s love of jazz was so great that it largely supplanted the
ballads, movie or show tunes, and novelty numbers that had made up a great
deal of typical musical repertoire heard on the airwaves and at dance halls.
At the same time, broadcasting became a key component of American
daily life, replacing the vaudeville circuit as a mass-market medium to pro-
mote popular music to the masses. Although radio transmission and recep-
tion had been proven an effective means of communication as early as 1906,
security concerns during the First World War stymied radio broadcasting’s
commercial growth. Starting in the early 1920s, radio broadcasters began
popping up across America, providing news, entertainment, and live musical
performances for the rapidly growing number of radio owners. Within a few
years, radio had joined newspapers, magazines, and motion pictures as the
most tangible manifestation of exactly what popular culture in America was
like on any given day. Advertisers soon came to understand the power and
immediacy afforded by radio’s national and local programming options.
Radio stations employed musicians on a daily basis, as there was only so
much news that could be read and at that time the quality of many sound
recordings was so poor that they would not translate well to the new medium.
Radio would continue to grow and entered its so-called Golden Era,
1930–1955, when it was the dominant form of public media in the nation.
During that time, programming ranged from daily or weekly episodes of
comedy, drama, and melodrama (the so-called soap opera, named for the
common commercial sponsors) to dance music, concert repertoire, sporting
events, news, information, and of course a growing number of advertise-
ments or advertiser-supported shows. One such example was the Lucky
Strike (cigarettes) Your Hit Parade, which ran weekly from 1935 to 1953 and
8 • INTRODUCTION
played America’s top popular songs each week. Demonstrating the realism,
immediacy, and impact that radio offered listeners, people could become a
part of a World Series baseball game, hear President Franklin Roosevelt’s
“fireside chats” giving Americans a sense of hope during the depths of the
Great Depression, or be frightened out of their wits by the Mercury Players’
chilling 1938 dramatic radio performance of the science fiction story War of
the Worlds.
Concurrently, talking pictures captured the imagination of the public, and
after the runaway success of the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, which featured
singing and talking performances, the music publishers of New York City’s
Tin Pan Alley began churning out songs to be featured in Hollywood’s latest
feature films. The alliances between Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley grew to
the point that the film studios acquired or invested in a number of music
publishing firms, an astute move as the synergy that could be generated by a
hit film drove demand for the recordings and sheet music of the songs fea-
tured in that film. This spawned nearly a decade of musicals, such as Top Hat
and Gold Diggers of 1933, two examples of the film fare that not only proved
to be wildly popular escapist entertainment for moviegoers but also created
jobs for composers, singers, musicians, dancers, as well as the host of crafts
and technical support staff necessary to produce a motion picture. By 1932,
the vaudeville palaces of the early 20th century were all converted to show
motion pictures at a fraction of the cost that had sustained so many perform-
ers during vaudeville’s peak.
Unfortunately, the success experienced by early record companies came to
a dramatic halt with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Soon, Thom-
as Edison’s label disappeared, while the Columbia and RCA radio networks
each snapped up one of the two largest remaining American labels, Columbia
and Victor, for pennies on the dollar. One invention that helped to sustain the
record industry was the new and improved jukeboxes that began to appear
just as the Great Depression set in. While an early version of the jukebox had
been patented in 1890, it could only play the same song. The newly reima-
gined jukeboxes of the 1930s allowed listeners to choose from a variety of
records that were stored inside. Thousands of copies of a popular records
were needed to fill America’s growing rank of jukeboxes from coast to coast.
At the same time, jukebox operators used a device called a “song counter” to
learn which were the most popular records played the previous week and
replace those that had not been played. This trend aligned with radio’s deci-
sion to also feature only the most popular songs, which eventually led to the
concept of top 40 radio.
Another effect that created waves in the music industry was the reduction
in the number and frequency that actual musicians were hired to perform for
radio broadcasts. Performers had been hired increasingly throughout the mid-
1920s, but as companies struggled during the Depression to control costs,
INTRODUCTION • 9
radio stations balked at the expense. Concurrently, improvements in micro-
phone and recording technology resulted in greatly improved fidelity for the
latest records. Due to these factors, the role of the dulcet-toned radio an-
nouncer became central, with the emergence of the disk jockey or deejay, a
new type of radio talent that combined personality and colloquial chatter
with a steady stream of the most popular recorded music for listeners. By the
mid-1930s, listeners were tuning in as much for the engaging personalities of
top deejays as for the latest popular songs. By 1940, the union representing
instrumental performers, the American Federation of Musicians, started what
came to be referred to as the “war on radio,” seeking legal restriction to
prevent radio stations from playing recorded music instead of live music
performed by its members. While a lower court found in favor of the union, a
subsequent appeal found that the control of any record’s use ceased at the
point at which it was sold or given away. James C. Petrillo, then head of the
AFM, initiated a recording ban, which lasted from 1942 to 1944 and ulti-
mately led to the record labels agreeing to only use union musicians on future
records and to set aside a special compensation fund from record sales re-
ceipts to provide for out-of-work musicians.
By the end of the 1930s, Americans were enjoying more music each day than
ever before through radio, records, jukeboxes, and motion pictures. Popular
singing stars such as Kate Smith and Bing Crosby enjoyed a status of celeb-
rity comparable to the biggest Hollywood names. America’s economy had
largely rebounded due to the ramping up of various industries related to
military defense, as well as the ambitious public works programs funded by
the New Deal. To the average American, while there was growing concern
about the political powder keg represented by the Axis nations’ global ag-
gressions, jobs were plentiful and life on the home front gave reason for
optimism. However, within the music industry itself, the tremendous growth
of broadcasting had led to heightened tensions between the broadcasters and
the music community. Songwriters, publishers, and ASCAP, the rights or-
ganization that represented many of America’s best-known songwriters, had
reached an impasse as to just how much money the creative community
should be paid for the use of their music over the airwaves. Record labels
were a party to the conversation, but not to the same extent as the songwriters
and their allies. Things came to a head in late 1940, when ASCAP submitted
a new royalty structure that would have doubled the licensing cost to major
broadcasters for use of its repertoire. Broadcasters were not intimidated and
quickly rallied to raise more than one million dollars to found an alternative
10 • INTRODUCTION
performing rights organization, Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), which not only
would offer more affordable music but opened its membership to many song-
writers and publishers who had not been invited to join ASCAP, largely due
to racial or cultural differences and its focus on a concert hall or Tin Pan
Alley repertoire.
As a result, BMI quickly became the home for some of the most successful
blues, country, and roots composers of the era. By 1941, the U.S. govern-
ment had intervened and negotiated a settlement between broadcasters and
rights holders, largely to try to eliminate the effect that ASCAP’s virtual
musical monopoly had held for the first 20 years of America’s radio boom.
Still, the popular music industry provided an emotional touchstone for
Americans at home and overseas in the far-flung conflicts that spanned the
decade, from the undeclared but no less deadly actions at sea as early as 1940
to the gradual repatriation of GIs that extended throughout the immediate
postwar years. Songs such as Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “Boogie
Woogie Bugle Boy,” “In the Mood,” and “GI Jive” became inextricably
linked to the nation’s emotional center as iconic sounds of the turbulent
times. The Armed Forces Radio Network employed many musicians and
entertainers who performed, recorded, and toured to help keep morale strong.
So-called Victory discs were made and distributed for playback around the
world wherever American troops were found. In the aftermath of the global
war, these V-discs were often left behind in many countries as an artifact of
American popular music.
The Second World War altered millions of American’s lives irrevocably.
In addition to the 16 million who served in the Armed Forces, 1.5 million
African Americans migrated from southern states to the north to find better
employment and living circumstances, bringing their music with them. Im-
proved train, bus, and auto transportation made mobility possible for more
and more Americans, many of whom also headed westward for war work.
America’s popular music during the war years was dominated by the big
band sound, which featured talented vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Peggy
Lee, and Jo Stafford. After the war, solo singers would eclipse the big bands
that had given them their start, becoming the new face of pop music. At the
same time, the explosive growth of new technologies, many of which were
by-products of wartime innovations, set the stage for a postwar music indus-
try boom.
The first of these was the introduction of magnetic tape recording, which
allowed straightforward editing of recorded performances as well as the abil-
ity to overdub additional instruments and voices, a process that soon came to
be known as multitrack recording. Inventor and guitarist Les Paul pioneered
this technique in the 1940s and 1950s, amazing listeners with the seemingly
impossible sounds he created in his combination studio/recording lab. At the
same time, the invention of the transistor led to the first miniature radio
INTRODUCTION • 11
receivers, which could allow listeners to take music with them wherever they
traveled. Lastly, a new level of musical fidelity became possible through the
invention of 33- and 45-RPM records, which dramatically eclipsed the sound
quality of the 78-RPM records that had been the industry standard for nearly
three decades.
Simultaneously, the sounds of both country and western and rhythm and
blues took flight over the airwaves and in many jukeboxes in the postwar
period. Both genres accumulated sizable listening audiences and helped sow
the seeds that would become rock ’n’ roll in the early 1950s. As radio had
gradually built up its central position as the public’s most cost-effective
conduit to music discovery and enjoyment in the first part of the 20th centu-
ry, television, which started broadcasting in the late 1940s, soon captured the
imagination of the American public. By 1951, a reported 16 million televi-
sions were installed across America, replacing the radio as the evening’s
source of entertainment for the typical middle-class family.
Americans were largely focused on restoring the social and familial ties that
had been disrupted during the six years of the war. The postwar economy
was one that largely shifted the boom in military production that resulted in
near-zero unemployment to a consumer-oriented economy, one marked by a
move to suburban living and mass marketing on a heretofore unprecedented
scale. Additionally, a spike in births to 38 million babies born between 1946
and 1956 resulted in the leading edge of the so-called baby boom. Combined
with babies born during the war, this group would become the first recog-
nized teen market that media, advertising, and entertainment executives tar-
geted for distinct products and services. The federal government fostered
expansion by increasing the number of radio licenses granted in the postwar
years, resulting in greatly increased opportunities for new types of music to
find an audience. African American music became more widely available to
the listening public, through radio and jukeboxes, and labels, such as Cincin-
nati’s King Records, blurred established conventions by having their black
artists record and release their own versions of country songs, while the
white country artists would often record country versions of popular R&B
hits of the day. Perhaps the most important black performer to help transcend
racial boundaries in this era, Louis Jordan, perfected his own version of
small-group jump blues music, perfect for dancing as well as planting the
seeds for the impending rock ’n’ roll explosion. Jordan was one of the first
12 • INTRODUCTION
real crossover artists, appealing to both black and white audiences, with his
most popular songs topping the charts for 113 weeks, a singular accomplish-
ment.
Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s advertising agencies were aware of the
teen market segment, as well as the fact that a by-product of postwar prosper-
ity was more leisure time and discretionary income in the hands of these
same teens. Music, cosmetics, fashion, automobiles, soft drink companies, as
well as after-school television shows such as American Bandstand and The
Mickey Mouse Club targeted America’s growing teen market as the sweet
spot for all types of products and media. In fact, televisions had become
ubiquitous, part of nearly 90 percent of American households by 1960. At the
same time, a growing number of entrepreneurial independent record labels
began releasing music that differed from the safe, formulaic pop crooners
and novelty songs that teens’ parents favored. The new music, soon to be
dubbed rock ’n’ roll by deejay Alan Freed, was loud, fast, energetic, and
often used double entendre to convey sexually suggestive messages to its
listeners. Teens loved it, and parents either ignored it or condemned it. By the
mid-1950s, teen culture moved from avant-garde to mainstream as Elvis
Presley’s records gained a massive audience, early pocket transistor radios
made music truly portable for the first time, and Hollywood’s depiction of
troubled youth in an inner-city setting via the film Blackboard Jungle created
a sensation coast to coast. The movie’s theme song, “Rock Around the
Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, would go on to sell an impressive
million copies during the month of March 1955. By January 1956, Elvis
Presley’s first single for RCA, “Heartbreak Hotel,” simultaneously made the
top five on the pop, country, and R&B charts, also selling more than one
million copies within a few months of its release.
The saga of the rock ’n’ roll explosion must also include the emergence of
the electric guitar as the defining instrument of what was rapidly becoming a
cultural movement, spawned by the new music. Epitomized by Chuck Berry
and his distinctive duck-walk stage moves, the electric guitar became rock’s
most recognizable symbol and an icon of rock’s rebellion—it was loud,
percussive, and gave every teen the chance to learn to play an instrument like
their idols, since mass merchants and mail order catalogers offered dozens of
affordable models. Berry’s three-minute pop masterpieces, such as “Maybel-
lene” and “Johnny Be Goode,” became integral to the 1950s teenage experi-
ence, and more importantly provided a musical model that a whole genera-
tion of young rock musicians around the world would study to learn the
fundamentals of the genre.
Two independent record labels of the era, Sun and Atlantic Records, epito-
mize the impact that rock ’n’ roll music was having on the music industry.
Sun was a Memphis-based label that at one point in the early 1950s had on its
roster Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Presley
INTRODUCTION • 13
and Cash would go on to become iconic figures in American popular music
after their tenure at Sun. Atlantic Records, after initially focusing on jazz,
helped a multitude of black artists achieve mainstream chart success. Ray
Charles, the Coasters, and the Drifters were the most successful Atlantic
artists to have multiple crossover hits. Atlantic was also one of the first
independent labels of the time to offer more equitable treatment and terms to
African American artists. The outsider status of early rock ’n’ roll combined
with its early adoption by independent record labels that championed the
music meant that by 1959 two-thirds of the market for pop music in America
was firmly in the control of the dozens of entrepreneurial independent labels.
The major labels, whose leaders were reluctant to embrace the rebellious teen
music, came late to the party, but in time they would regroup and regain their
control as the arbiters of American top 40 radio and record sales.
The music industry establishment sought to defuse rock’s power through a
variety of strategies. First, rock’s direct challenge to societal norms relating
to sexuality was decried as harmful to America’s moral fabric by a range of
civic, religious, and industry leaders. Informally viewed today as the “war on
rock,” these efforts gained traction with a large segment of the public, as well
as the mainstream media, through well-organized letter-writing campaigns
and calls of protest to local radio stations that played songs such as the
Dominoes’ “Sixty Minute Man,” Etta James’s “Work with Me, Annie,” and
even the Everly Brothers’ comparatively tame “Wake Up, Little Susie,”
which were all targeted for censorship and removal from radio, jukeboxes,
and record stores. ASCAP teamed up with industry trade magazines such as
Variety to take to task musicians, songwriters, and labels that were profiting
by the loose morals being sung about to impressionable teens, coining the
term “leer-ics” to make plain to the public the prurient nature of many rock
’n’ roll songs. Additionally, the practice of “pay for play,” providing finan-
cial or other inducements to help promote a particular record or artist, came
under congressional scrutiny during what became known as the payola hear-
ings of 1959. The hearings targeted high-profile deejays, in particular Alan
Freed and Dick Clark, as having been influenced by payments from labels or
radio promoters. Clark, who was integrally involved in the ownership of
various record labels and publishing companies, quickly divested himself of
any interest in them and came out of the hearings unscathed. Freed, on the
other hand, had already become a lightning rod for the backlash to rock ’n’
roll’s perceived licentiousness and corruption of white teenagers embracing
largely black-originated music and musicians and the libidinous messages
contained in the rebellious music. Not long after a 1958 concert that Freed
had promoted erupted in violence, he was fired from his radio and television
jobs, and by 1959 his career was in free fall. His arrest in 1960 capped the
payola hearings, which also resulted in a bill being passed outlawing the
14 • INTRODUCTION
practice of pay for play. Broadcasters became more cautious about program-
ming any potentially offensive music in the wake of the very public censure
to America’s most popular new music.
The year 1960 was a milestone in the evolution of the music industry in
America as it marked the rise of America’s most successful black-owned
record label, Detroit’s Motown Records. Founded by Berry Gordy Jr., Mo-
town developed a formula that resulted in high-quality, upbeat, radio-friendly
hits that avoided any direct reference to sexual, racial, or political messages.
Additionally, the company started its own charm school to prepare its per-
formers for the glare of the media, teaching them to remain poised, profes-
sional, and focused on delivering a polished, apolitical pop music gem each
time they stepped to the microphone. The formula worked to perfection, and
over the next decade the homegrown label would become a juggernaut,
notching more than 100 number one records and enjoying nearly total accep-
tance by mainstream white media, including television, radio, print, and film.
The label’s in-house talent development and management scheme resulted in
a veritable who’s who of American pop royalty of the era, including Stevie
Wonder, Michael Jackson, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations,
and dozens of other chart-topping artists. Gordy developed the slogan “The
Sound of Young America” to describe the label’s music, which sold a re-
ported 70 percent of its hits to its predominantly white audience.
Motown’s formula of focusing on music that was largely apolitical was
contrary to America’s highly public struggles of the 1950s and 1960s that
centered on the nation’s practice of systematic discrimination against people
of color. The largely nonviolent civil rights movement, led by Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., was slowly building public and political will for a change in
America’s treatment of blacks and other nonwhites. Interestingly, in addition
to the civil rights movement’s liberal use of gospel and spiritual songs drawn
from the repertoire of black churches, other songs often tied to the civil rights
movement such as “We Shall Overcome” became popular during the early
20th-century labor struggles. Folk music also came to play a prominent role
in providing protesters with simple, powerful melodies to help frame their
debate. Songs such as Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” were taken up and
sung by protest marchers at rallies around the nation. Dylan, Joan Baez,
Peter, Paul and Mary, and Pete Seeger performed regularly at marches and
rallies in the early 1960s to help promote a change to the treatment of black
INTRODUCTION • 15
Americans. Reflecting the growing national conversation about civil rights,
Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” rose to number two
on the Billboard pop chart in 1963.
As the civil rights movement drew on mostly folk and gospel music tradi-
tions and performers, mainstream popular music in the early 1960s still
largely reflected the idealism and promise of the postwar American dream.
While independent labels had brought rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues
music to the masses, the major labels finally embraced these styles in the
1960s in order to remain relevant and profitable. At the same time, a genera-
tion of young British musicians had been studying American popular music
intensely and using it as the raw materials to shape a lively new sound that
would come to dominate the American music industry by 1964. These
groups, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks,
and dozens of others, captured the hearts and wallets of American record
buyers in what was dubbed the British Invasion. Its high-water mark was
likely 4 April 1964, when the Beatles held the top five positions on the
influential Billboard chart, a feat that has never been replicated before or
after. While Frank Sinatra may have caused riots with his performances in
the 1940s, and Elvis caused millions of teen girls to feel their first sexual
longings, the Beatles were a musical and cultural phenomenon like no other
in history. Every word the band uttered was subjected to intense scrutiny by
fans, as well as the media, and as their worldwide fame grew, the Beatles’
adventurous artistic nature helped to define an entire generation. The group
led millions of young adults into the counterculture era, a time marked by
personal and spiritual exploration and a willingness to openly challenge au-
thority.
Counterculture figures such as Harvard professor Timothy Leary chal-
lenged America’s youth in 1966 to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” This was
a reference to experimenting with mind-altering drugs and fully embracing
the counterculture by abandoning the values of one’s parents. By the mid-
1960s, musicians began to decry America’s growing involvement in the un-
official Vietnam conflict. This included artists such as the Byrds, who used
biblical verse as the basis for their 1965 antiwar song “Turn, Turn, Turn”;
Dion, whose poignant 1968 release “Abraham, Martin and John” mourned
the senseless loss of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.; and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s scathing 1969 critique
of war and privilege, “Fortunate Son.” Many of these songs, as well as
commentary about the counterculture movement, were broadcast over FM
radio stations that afforded much greater programming freedom than main-
stream AM pop radio of the day. San Francisco, a hotbed for the countercul-
ture, was one of the first cities where the new music, free outdoor concerts,
and so-called free-form FM radio created a web of support and promotion for
the new lifestyle embraced by youth largely disaffected from their parents’
16 • INTRODUCTION
cultural values. Simultaneously, music influenced by the counterculture
came to the fore with greater musical experimentation, epic hours-long con-
certs with light shows, free drugs being passed around, and a sense of com-
munity that spawned the modern music festival movement all coming to the
fore in the 1960s. To report on this music-driven movement, a new breed of
consumer-focused music magazines developed, dubbed the rock press, led by
writers such as Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason (Rolling Stone), Dave
Marsh and Lester Bangs (Creem), and Jon Landau, Ed Ward, and Peter
Guralnick (Crawdaddy!).
Three great musical and cultural events helped to define the historical place
occupied by the 1960s in the history of the music industry. Each was unique
in its own way, but taken as a grouping, they illuminated the way forward for
the music industry. The Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and Altamont music
festivals broke new ground and demonstrated palpably the tremendous ap-
peal that the counterculture and popular music held for the masses. Both
Monterey and Woodstock spawned hit movies and albums that created long-
er-term profits than one weekend of ticket sales. The three festivals also
provided an intense look at the risks of such large-scale events for fans,
promoters, and society in general, leading to the development of the modern
concert promoter and today’s multibillion-dollar live entertainment industry,
which has risen to become central to the success of nearly all modern-day
artists.
In the late 1960s, new technology to make music more portable led to the
commercial adoption of first the 8-track, then the compact cassette audio
formats allowing portable and auto music players to provide on the go music
choice to consumers. Fans could purchase the LP version for home and the 8-
track for their car, with a resultant bump in sales for the record labels and
artists, who could collect revenue on each new format introduced. This trend
of the record industry developing new music delivery formats would contin-
ue for four decades, leading to record-breaking profits for major labels by the
end of the century.
With the broader acceptance of the counterculture and the growing up of
its main stakeholders, record labels and corporate America took the opportu-
nity to cash in on marketing the counterculture via music, films, books, and
media of every type. At the same time, radio stations began to further seg-
ment the types and styles of music in order to appeal to a more defined and
narrower slice of the listening public. Major labels that once turned up their
noses at an artist’s more far-fetched dreams now dove headlong into the
INTRODUCTION • 17
business of supporting such artist’s most creative fantasies. Artists who
wanted to start their own record labels were encouraged to do so, with fund-
ing from the majors, who provided all-important distribution. Artists also
became talent scouts, with Frank Zappa bringing platinum-selling Alice
Cooper to Warner Music and David Crosby discovering Joni Mitchell and
bringing her to Reprise.
Meanwhile, Wall Street investors took notice of the success of record labels
and their top artists and began to invest or acquire holdings in the music
industry. The early 1970s were a period of consolidation and investment,
with RCA, CBS, Capitol-EMI, Warner Communication, and Phillips domi-
nating the majority of the U.S. record business. As part of this consolidation,
the major labels became vertically integrated, now owning recording studios,
pressing plants, music publishing companies, distribution arms, and more.
By controlling every step in the path from music creation to its eventual
consumption, the labels achieved ever greater levels of profitability. Part of
the recipe for these growing profits was the diversification of the musical
offerings to go beyond the 1960s model of progressive rock music. The
1970s featured a vast array of musical genres, each of which found its own
listening audience. These included the singer–songwriter epitomized by Ca-
role King and Paul Simon; art rock groups such as Yes, Emerson, Lake &
Palmer, and Pink Floyd; soul music from Stevie Wonder, the O’Jays, and
Wilson Pickett; women’s music featuring artists such as Joy of Cooking, Cris
Williamson, and Holly Near; hard rock from Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath,
and Grand Funk Railroad; southern boogie from the Allman Brothers, Mar-
shall Tucker Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd; and country rock from Jackson
Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and one of the best-selling acts of all time, the
Eagles.
While the majority of these artists helped to define the era with their
musical contributions, glam rockers made a visual statement that attracted
legions of young fans, while often repelling or at best confusing older listen-
ers and parents. Kiss, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie used highly stylized
makeup, wardrobe, and concert production techniques to create a completely
different image than the aforementioned stars. The more sensational glam
rockers’ personas became, the more media attention, and fans, they garnered.
Videos began to play a role in the marketing of such highly visual artists, a
precursor to the music video boom to come a few years later. As a clear
indication that major record label executives had effectively learned the pain-
ful lessons of the 1950s–1960s when their forbearers dismissed rock ’n’ roll
18 • INTRODUCTION
as worthless, 1970s executives latched onto these highly visual artists and
propelled each of them to platinum-level sales. This fragmentation of what
had been one diverse stream of pop music into various narrower genres
coincided with an incredible five-year doubling of record industry revenues
from two billion dollars in 1973 to more than four billion in 1978. In fact, the
art and science of marketing popular music had been refined to the point that
numerous groups were eclipsing the historic sales levels reached by the Beat-
les a decade earlier. Fleetwood Mac sold 10 million (U.S.) copies of their
album Rumors, a feat matched by Peter Frampton with Frampton Comes
Alive! and bested by the Eagles’ Hotel California, which sold 11 million
copies. One thing characterized the music itself for these top artists. Their
sound was slick, polished, and primed to be put in heavy rotation on main-
stream radio stations globally. These artists’ concert appearances were for-
mulaic, predictable, and tightly choreographed, without the initial impetuous
spontaneity that was a hallmark of earlier rock music, and were soon being
held in football stadiums. Taking their cue from these mega-hits and large-
scale concerts, major labels would go on in the 1980s to develop what be-
came known as the superstar model, which will be discussed later, where a
handful of the most promising artists on their roster would receive massive
amounts of promotion, while less successful but still talented artists would be
dropped from the labels.
Still, not all music fans were satisfied with the smooth, polished sounds
and slickly marketed image of popular music that the major labels presented
in the 1970s. Pockets of musical rebellion formed in the late 1970s, leading
to two very different new streams of popular music: disco and punk. Each
was born out of necessity as the originators of these musical genres felt that
mainstream popular music did not represent them or their values. Punk was
angry, loud, and confrontational; disco was smooth, sensuous, and steeped in
multicultural and pansexual reverie. At first, the major labels ignored these
upstart genres as passing fads that had little chance at making any headway
in the commercial marketplace. However, once again, fans proved the indus-
try pundits wrong as disco literally took over the popular music scene be-
tween 1975 and 1979. At one point there were more than 200 radio stations
broadcasting disco around the clock, while an estimated 20,000 disco clubs
opened and as much as 40 percent of the Billboard charts were disco hits.
Entertainment companies jumped on the disco bandwagon, and the film Sat-
urday Night Fever, released in 1977, would become a box office sensation,
while its soundtrack album would sell 15 million copies in the United States
alone. Promotion for the movie lifted album sales, while radio airplay of the
soundtrack cuts led to an extremely long run for the film, a technique now
known as cross-media marketing and practiced annually by numerous film
distribution companies for products from Star Wars to Shrek.
INTRODUCTION • 19
However, the nation’s fascination with disco seemed to come to a skidding
halt by 1980, and the record industry entered a downward arc, with sales
declining from a high of $4.1 billion in 1978 to $3.6 billion in 1982. Record
labels became cautious and let go thousands of employees worldwide, re-
duced the number of new albums being released, and slashed their rosters of
artists that had not had a hit in recent memory.
No discussion of the 1970s would be complete without a brief mention of
Congress’s creation of the sound recording copyright in 1972, or the Copy-
right Act of 1976, which attempted a major overhaul of the Copyright Act of
1909. The two most substantial changes were to enhance the term or duration
of copyright ownership in musical works from a 28-year term, renewable for
an additional 28 years, to the life of the author plus 50 years, which in
practical terms meant doubling or even tripling the time before any work
might possibly enter the public domain. The second dramatic change came
when new works would be protected by the 1976 copyright law the instant
that they were fixed in any tangible medium versus a requirement under the
1909 law that a work must be published to have copyright protection. The
1976 law also attempted to clarify the role of fair use in contemporary soci-
ety, establishing four guidelines or points of reference by which use could be
judged by the copyright owner or the courts as justifiable or an infringement.
On 1 August 1981, a new era in the music industry was launched when
MTV, short for Music Television, began broadcasting music videos 24 hours
a day as a cable network. While music industry executives were either large-
ly skeptical or ambivalent about the market for such an offering, within a
year, the network proved to be hugely popular with the teen and young adult
demographic. MTV’s founders applied much of the same research methodol-
ogy they had used in top 40 radio, and in the process irrevocably changed the
way pop music would be marketed. Soon, labels were rushing to get out
music videos by their most promising acts, and the look and fashions asso-
ciated with a particular artist would become equal in importance to their
music. Since there was a shortage of music videos from U.S. artists at MTV’s
launch, scores of British artists who had video content at hand became stars
in the United States, largely based on their heavy rotation on MTV, heralding
a second British Invasion.
Technology would continue to evolve with the introduction of the compact
disc (CD) in 1982, a joint invention of Philips and Sony. Rather than the
analog recording and reproduction used in tape and vinyl playback, CDs
20 • INTRODUCTION
encoded the audio signal into a binary series of zeroes and ones, which would
then be decoded upon playback into the artist’s music. The shiny 4-and-3/4-
inch discs promised consumers a nearly indestructible disc, purportedly high-
er fidelity than LPs, and up to 74 minutes of music on a single disc. While
initially CDs cost more to manufacture than LPs, these costs soon became
comparable to, and eventually less than, that of an LP; however, labels still
charged a premium price for the new format, while simultaneously lowering
artist royalties on compact discs. Such practices contributed to a 20-year rise
in recording industry sales and profits as consumers replaced their worn LPs
with the new CD format in record numbers. Piracy and concerns regarding
home taping by consumers emerged in this era, and the record industry
successfully lobbied Congress to place a levy on the sales of blank tape to
help offset the perceived industry losses. New recording technologies were
also developed that provided musicians with the means to start doing home
recordings on affordable reel-to-reel or cassette recording systems that al-
lowed basic overdubbing for multitrack recording and mixing. Professional
digital recording systems costing many hundreds of times more than the
small home recording systems also were introduced, expanding the range and
capabilities that engineers, producers, and artists could now utilize in the
creation of pop music.
The record industry pulled itself out of the slump of the early 1980s by
developing and marketing a small group of top artists that deservedly earned
the moniker superstar. These included Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston,
Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. Each would become international-
ly acclaimed recording and touring artists who sold millions of copies of
their albums. All but Springsteen also parlayed their superstar status into film
roles that furthered their celebrity and fueled record sales. Michael Jackson’s
sixth studio album, Thriller, released in 1982 and produced by Quincy Jones,
stands as the defining work of the superstar era. It would eventually sell more
than 65 million copies globally while earning an unprecedented 12 Grammy
Awards and seven top 10 singles and own the top spot on the Billboard chart
for 37 weeks. The album was also an artistic triumph and spawned some of
the most-watched music videos of the era, especially the 14-minute-long,
zombie-infested “Thriller” video.
An alternative hit-making strategy to the superstar formula was to pair up
popular music with youth-oriented movies, such as Footloose, Flashdance,
Top Gun, and Back to the Future, a practice that the record labels used in the
mid-1980s to enhance their recovery. Echoing the close relationship between
Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley from the 1930s, the music industry leveraged
movies to propel a number of artists to chart-topping positions.
One by-product of the superstar system was that in order to provide maxi-
mum marketing muscle for the superstar releases, record labels further cut
the number of new artists being signed and developed. The tremendous prof-
INTRODUCTION • 21
its generated by an album such as Thriller caused labels to narrowly concen-
trate their resources on a handful of artists rather than invest modestly in a
broad range of new talent. The effect was that fewer artists got their chance
to make the big time. In part, due to the narrowing “hits only” focus of major
labels, a totally new form of artist expression bubbled up in New York City,
right under the noses of the major record labels. Eventually, this new music
was dubbed hip hop. It embodied music, street art, and dancing, along with
spoken word performance by emcees or rappers that were often a gritty
reality check from America’s inner cities. It soon struck a chord with disaf-
fected youth across the nation and would in a few years become the fastest-
growing musical genre since rock ’n’ roll.
New technologies, including satellite communications and the ubiquitous
Walkman portable music player, along with MTV’s growth to become a
global arbiter of youth style, set the stage for a flurry of celebrity-driven
global charity concerts or tours at this time. Live Aid, held simultaneously in
London and Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, brought together 60 acts and was
viewed by more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. When all was said and
done, Live Aid raised $67 million to fight famine in Africa, and musicians
became aware that their stardom could help address social problems. Soon
artists banded together to address domestic and global issues, including Farm
Aid, to address struggling family farmers; Sun City, to confront the reality of
South African apartheid; and Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope
tour, to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners in regimes where
basic human rights were not granted. While these so-called mega-events
certainly drew worldwide attention to worthy causes, such events attracted
some criticism as record companies used them as a springboard to market
their featured artists on an unprecedented global scale. At the same time, by
1988, six vertically integrated international multimedia companies had
emerged to control more than 70 percent of the global market for recorded
music: Warner Music Group, EMI, Columbia (owned by Sony), BMG (Ber-
telsmann), PolyGram, and Universal Music Group.
The road to consolidation occurred between 1986 and 1990, as three pow-
erful international players had taken over one of America’s major labels,
seeing such an investment as a sound play since the annual sales for recorded
music continued to grow year to year. Bertelsmann’s acquisition of the sto-
ried RCA label family, Sony’s purchase of Columbia’s label groups, and
Matsushita’s purchase of MCA signaled a new era in the music industry,
with these parent companies installing leaders intent on maximizing profits
to the greatest extent possible. Warner Music was also merged in 1989 with
the print giant Time Inc. to form Time-Warner, a diversified media company
that became the blueprint for future music industry mergers to come in the
1990s. The last mega-label, Universal Music, would be formed in the mid-
1990s when Edgar Bronfman Jr., an heir of the Seagram’s beverage empire,
22 • INTRODUCTION
acquired first MCA and then PolyGram Records, christening the new compa-
ny Universal Music Group, which was soon the largest music company in the
world. As the music business increasingly focused on huge vertically inte-
grated multinational media companies fighting for market share, independent
labels continued to play an important role in the overall music ecosystem by
helping to uncover and nurture new music genres and artists deemed too
risky by the major labels. However, the indies’ financial clout was slight in
comparison to that of the majors in this era.
Ten years after its introduction, the compact disc had completely replaced
the vinyl album as the most popular purchase and delivery format among
music consumers. Costs to produce them came down dramatically, packag-
ing was simplified into a small rectangular box or cardboard sleeve, while in
the mid-1990s mass merchandisers such as Walmart and Target would be-
come the nation’s top record retail outlets by offering discounts greater than
the local record store could afford to offer.
As the new millennium dawned, it was clear that a major change in the music
industry was underway, due to the impact that new technologies and internet
access were having throughout the entertainment world. First and foremost,
music fans rebelled against the standard delivery format for new music, the
$18 compact disc. As MP3 files of singles began to be distributed at a
grassroots level among music consumers, the value of the CD was put in
jeopardy. Napster built up a loyal user base seemingly overnight that ex-
ceeded 60 million music fans, but the record industry seemed frozen in the
headlights of rapidly advancing technological change. The majors held meet-
ings, launched an unproductive effort to bring the tech and music industries
together dubbed the Secure Digital Music Initiative, lobbied Congress, and
tried to devise ways to lock the content on the disc so consumers would be
unable to rip CDs.
Simultaneously, they banded together to launch two internet music distri-
bution portals, Pressplay and MusicNet, neither of which excited music con-
sumers. The industry’s most effective countermeasure against unauthorized
peer-to-peer file sharing proved to be a lawsuit to shut down Napster for
inducing copyright infringement on a massive global scale. The case went on
for more than a year, at the end of which the court found that Napster was
guilty of promoting copyright infringement and ordered it to stop facilitating
its peer-to-peer users access to “free” music. Unfortunately, even though
Napster was in its death throes, dozens of other similar internet services
popped up, many of which, unlike Napster, which was based in Silicon
Valley, were housed outside the borders and reach of U.S. copyright law.
The proverbial genie had been let out of the bottle. Between foreign file
sharing sites and a new file exchange technology known as a torrent, it soon
became nearly impossible to track down unauthorized users. Still, under the
leadership of the RIAA, the record industry went to court against thousands
of music consumers seeking punitive damages of up to hundreds of thou-
26 • INTRODUCTION
sands of dollars. The lengthy series of hundreds of highly publicized lawsuits
turned out to be a public relations nightmare for the industry. Although the
campaign did raise public awareness that music was not truly free, in hind-
sight it appeared to be a hollow victory as media and the music press took the
industry to task mercilessly for suing grandmothers and teenagers for sharing
music (illegally) via their computers.
At the same time that the record industry was struggling to adapt to the
new reality of free music access, Apple Computer saw the opportunity to
remake the relationship between artists and music fans by creating an iconic,
revolutionary portable music player that could hold 1,000 songs in a palm-
sized digital device, dubbed the iPod. Launched on 23 October 2001, it
quickly became the most exciting new “must have” music player for music
fans and helped to spread Apple’s now ubiquitous iTunes music player soft-
ware as the global standard for digital music library and playback functions.
Eighteen months after the iPod’s debut, on 28 April 2003, Apple opened the
iTunes music store. This proved to be another home run for the computer
company as it provided the first legal alternative for consumers to simply and
legally acquire music from five major labels. In its first five days of opera-
tion, Apple sold one million tracks. More importantly, Apple’s ability to
develop a convenient, user-friendly, legal alternative to illegal downloading
gave it a market leadership position in the retailing of music online, a posi-
tion it still holds today as the world’s dominant retailer of downloadable
music.
While record industry revenues began a steady decline in the new millen-
nium as more and more consumers switched from purchasing $18 CDs to 99
cent downloads, the live music industry reached new heights of success, as
marquee artists such as Madonna, Jay-Z, and U2 entered into long-term,
multitour contracts with Live Nation Entertainment to handle their future
tours, in return receiving up to $120 million in guarantees against future
touring income. Concerts became big business as the overall live music
industry grew from $950 million in ticket sales in 1995 to more than $1.7
billion by 2000, according to Pollstar. As artist record royalties declined in
the early 2000s, on a parallel track with diminishing CD sales, artists, manag-
ers, and concert promoters saw the opportunity to replace lost revenue with
more ambitious, longer lasting tours. While artists typically earned up to one-
third of their revenue from record sales in the 1980s and 1990s, by 2010
arena headliners were making two-thirds or more of their revenue from live
performances and ancillary tour sponsorships. The strategy of bundling addi-
INTRODUCTION • 27
tional goods and services, such as combining a VIP backstage meet and greet
with the concert ticket or providing a secure code to download the touring
artist’s latest album, came to be seen as a solid strategy to enhance the live
music experience through value-added options.
Another trend in live music was the reemergence of the music festival as a
cornerstone of the popular music industry. Some festivals became annual
touring events, such as the Warped Tour and Ozzfest, which visit 20 to 30
cities each summer, while others are destination festivals such as Bonaroo,
Coachella, or Outside Lands. As ticket prices for arena shows featuring one
or two headliners have continued to escalate, many fans feel music festivals
offer greater value, with the opportunity to see and hear dozens of artists in
an immersive weekend of music and revelry. Festivals also afford baby
bands a platform to be discovered by a much larger audience. The overall
trend in live music entertainment is that well-known artists are still able to
command premium ticket prices for their own tours while lesser-known acts
must work hard in an effort to simply break even touring. Still, the practice of
touring is a necessity to widen an artist’s fan base and eventually becomes a
key revenue source after an artist’s fan base has grown sufficiently.
Another recent variable in the live music marketplace is the advent of
online ticket resellers, who use sophisticated programmable computer tech-
nology to secure dozens of preferred seats to concerts the instant tickets go
on sale. As demand grows, these resellers, once largely derided as scalpers,
then offer the tickets for resale, often at a premium price. As a result, some
fans may end up spending many times the face value printed on the ticket in
order to see a favorite artist. Interestingly, the artist and their team rarely
receive any of the increased revenue that resellers earn for their risk in
purchasing tickets. Similar to the advent of digital downloading of music, the
ticketing portion of the live music industry, estimated to be worth in excess
of two billion dollars, seems ripe for a reorganization and consolidation to
offer a more transparent way for artists and fans to consummate the ticket
purchase process. With North American live music revenues at $6.9 billion
in 2015 and projected to grow to $9.1 billion by 2020 (these numbers do not
reflect secondary ticket reseller revenues), it appears that the live music
sector will remain the most essential part of many major artists’ revenue
strategies for the foreseeable future. Less well-known artists must rely on a
wider range of less profitable activities until such time as they can sell out
larger venues.
The tragic attacks on 11 September 2001 caused shock waves across the
music industry. In the immediate aftermath, concerts and tours were canceled
or rescheduled due to travel restrictions, while hundreds of artists pitched in
to perform at benefit events to help the people affected by the attacks. Within
a few weeks after the attacks, it became clear that the music industry was of
two minds in its response to the events. Some artists, notably a number of
28 • INTRODUCTION
country music stars, believed that retribution was called for and penned a
number of songs similar to the popular music of earlier eras that took Ameri-
ca’s perceived enemies to task and demanded retribution. However, other
artists had a different response and wrote songs of sadness and sorrow, while
some called on society to look for peaceful resolutions to the underlying
causes for the attacks. This dichotomy came to a very public head in 2003,
when a feud erupted between two of country music’s biggest stars, Toby
Keith, who advocated for war against America’s enemies, and the Dixie
Chicks, who didn’t. As it would turn out, the backlash against the Dixie
Chicks’ antiwar statements would cause them to transition out of being a
purely country act into the pop music marketplace, a move they made suc-
cessfully with the release of their 2006 Grammy-winning album Taking the
Long Way Home. Sadly, the attacks of 9/11 ushered in an era when on some
occasions entertainment venues and even entertainers themselves have been
targeted for violent political acts, such as the infamous November 2015 Paris
nightclub attack and the May 2017 terrorist attack outside a concert in Man-
chester, England. Although such examples are exceedingly rare today, artists
and promoters have become more aware of possible threats and are vigilant
regarding security for audience members, crew, and artists.
Interestingly, while the payouts for record labels and recording artists have
declined dramatically in the new millennium, music can be found on more
platforms and in more places than ever before. A small number of A-list
artists with global reach such as Adele, Drake, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, and
Metallica still sell significant amounts of downloads and, when their music is
made available via streaming, millions of streams. But income from record
sales, downloads, and streaming is now a fraction of what it was two decades
earlier. Most young music lovers take their music with them via mobile
devices, including cellular phones using either Android or iPhone operating
systems. Video games rely on music in the same way as films to convey the
emotions and themes found in each scenario, which has led to new artists
partnering with video game studios to engage with new audiences from the
gaming community.
Streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal all
offer “on the go” access to subscribers, who may access music playlists
through either Wi-Fi or cellular data when necessary. One area of concern is
free music access via portals such as YouTube, as well as the freemium
INTRODUCTION • 31
unpaid versions of Pandora or Spotify, which monetize music use by includ-
ing ads with the music. YouTube became the dominant music discovery and
listening platform used by American teens. The tension between the music
industry and technology companies over music usage and royalties appears
likely to continue as music ownership rapidly becomes an anachronism for
most consumers under the age of 40.
Meanwhile, the trend of steadily rising overall revenues for the live music
industry has masked a troubling trend that has emerged in that market seg-
ment. The number of tickets being sold is nearly flat, meaning that the rise in
overall ticket sales revenues is due to the nonstop increase in ticket prices,
not a wholesale increase in the overall number of concertgoers. For some
fans, higher prices have led to harder scrutiny of just how to spend disposable
income on entertainment. Long term, the value offered by high-level artists’
tours is likely to continue to be challenged by the healthy music festival
market, which offers more bands per dollar spent, as well as enhanced tech-
nologies such as high-definition broadcasts of concerts on premium channels
or networks.
WHAT’S NEXT?
It seems certain that the pace of technological innovation will continue and,
if anything, is likely to accelerate more rapidly in the future. With the new
paradigm of music streaming becoming dominant, record labels and artists,
traditional adversaries in the 20th-century music industry, began to see the
benefits of closer ties. This was in large part to ensure that whatever new
technologies emerge and shape the paths for music distribution and access
will fairly compensate the artists and businesspersons responsible for making
and promoting new music. Copyright laws will need to be revised and updat-
ed more frequently than in the past to reflect the realities of the changing
digital media marketplace and to better balance the needs of creators and tech
innovators. Strides being made in both artificial intelligence and virtual real-
ity hold the promise to once again reinvent the music making and music
listening experience within the next generation.
Today is an exciting time to be involved in every segment of the music
industry. However, the fundamental engine of the business—the creation,
marketing, and monetization of new music—hasn’t intrinsically changed as
much as the pathways to get music to consumers. At the same time, the
multinational major record labels have proven wily competitors as they have
invested in a number of the new music delivery systems, including Spotify
and Vevo, a leading online music video service. While the slogan coined by
the Nashville Songwriters Association International—“It all begins with a
32 • INTRODUCTION
song”—is still true today, what happens to that song on its way to the music
consumer is more complex and varied than ever before in the history of the
music industry. Still, music continues to play a defining role in shaping
America’s cultural, artistic, and political future, just as it has since the na-
tion’s founding.
#
100% RETURN PRIVILEGE. See RETURN PRIVILEGE.
33
34 • 45-RPM RECORD
streams, the record label or other entity provides a much larger pool of funds
for the artist to draw on to support their creative work than would be offered
in a traditional (non-360) record deal. The first such deal was made in the
1990s between EMI Records and Robby Williams in the UK. Soon after,
U.S. record and concert promotion companies began to structure similar
deals with U.S. artists such as Korn, Madonna, and Jay-Z. In the current
climate, with the hegemony of the major record labels being challenged by
a more decentralized music distribution system, some music managers now
question whether the 360 deal’s upfront investment still justifies the sponsor-
ing firm’s shares in so many of the artists’ income streams.
78-RPM RECORD. While the term itself did not become used widely until
after World War II, most disc-type records (as opposed to cylinder record-
ings) produced in the first half of the 20th century did in fact play back at 78
revolutions per minute. The discs themselves were most often made out of
shellac, a breakable material commonly available. Ten-inch records would
hold three minutes of music, while 12-inch records could reproduce up to
five minutes of music. The 78 was replaced by the 45-RPM record in the
early 1950s, and 78 albums were overtaken by 33-RPM albums that became
popular at that same time. Many collectors still prize 78-RPM recordings,
although the audio quality is poor when compared to newer music playback
technologies.
A
ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT. A person with training and experience in
the art and science of acoustics, called upon to help design or modify a
structure to be used for a music performance or as a recording facility. Not
only must acoustical consultants be well versed in physics and the properties
of sound, they must also understand construction practices, building codes
and requirements, and ergonomics for the extended operations of such facil-
ities over time.
ADELE. Adele Laurie Adkins was born in London on 5 May 1988. She is a
performer and songwriter who has proven able to buck industry trends with
regard to the declining sales of physical albums and downloads. She began
singing at the age of four, eventually graduating from the BRIT School for
Performing Arts and Technology in 2006. Soon after graduation, some of her
original songs were posted on MySpace and drew the attention of an execu-
tive at XL Recordings. Adele soon met a number of music industry managers
and by 2006 had acquired management.
35
36 • ADVANCE
She continued to write and perform, honing her skills and voice, leading
up to the release of the album 19 in 2008. Part of her strategy included
coming to America, where she toured and made television appearances to
build her audience. By mid-2009, 19 had sold a notable 2.2 million albums
globally. Early in 2011, she released 21, and it eclipsed the success of her
previous album, going on to sell 30 million copies worldwide as of 2014.
Near the end of her sold-out world tour in support of 21, she developed voice
problems and was advised to have surgery and stop singing during her recov-
ery period, which lasted three months. Adele’s third album, 25, was released
in November 2015 after the much anticipated October release of the lead
single, “Hello,” for which the accompanying music video was viewed 27
million times on YouTube in the 24 hours following its release, reaching one
billion views in 88 days. 25 achieved the most successful first week of sales
for an album, notching 3.38 million albums sold, the most for any album
since SoundScan began tracking record sales in 1991. Overall, Adele is
estimated to have sold more than 104 million records so far in her career.
Adele has been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and the LGBTQ
community. She has largely withheld her most recent releases for a period of
time from free music streaming services in order to maximize earnings from
record sales and digital downloads.
AGENT. The role of the talent agent is to procure live performance opportu-
nities for musicians and bands. Known colloquially as “gigs,” these perfor-
mance opportunities may range from playing at a wedding or retirement
party to performing at half time at the Super Bowl. Agents are the quintes-
sential middlemen in that they must carefully determine the needs of the
talent buyer, be it a night club, college, or music festival, and help ensure that
the artists booked for each performance opportunity are an appropriate fit for
that talent buyer’s venue, audience, and budget. In many states, there are
statutes that govern the actions of agents, in an effort to reduce unscrupulous
behavior. Nearly all agents are also obligated to work under the rules pro-
vided by the performing artists unions, including American Federation of
Musicians, Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and
Radio Artists, and American Guild of Musical Artists, a process referred
to as franchising. Agents are generally compensated 10 percent of the gross
revenue for each performance they have arranged for artists that belong to
one or more of the various unions.
ALBUM CYCLE. An album cycle refers to the total time period that sur-
rounds the creation and marketing of an artist’s album. Generally, this will
include writing, rehearsing, recording, releasing, and then touring in support
of a new album release. Throughout the 20th century, artists and labels were
unified in their efforts to make and promote the album as it was the primary
revenue source for both entities. As digital distribution of music has largely
eclipsed physical record sales and streaming surpasses downloading as con-
sumers’ preferred way to access music, the concept of an album cycle has
become less central to an artist’s career arc. Today, maintaining the ear and
eye of the listening public through the release of singles has become an
alternative to the traditional album cycle, although the industry has not aban-
doned the concept completely.
ALL-IN. An industry term that normally refers to more than one type of
royalty, payment, or obligation being combined with another type of royalty,
payment, or obligation. For example, record producers normally receive a
distinct royalty on the sales of records that they produced; however, the
actual producer royalties are included in the artist’s “all-in” royalty pay-
ment from the record label. In the case of an artist earning a royalty of 14
38 • ALPERT, HERB
percent of suggested retail list price (SLRP), their producer may be entitled
to receive 3 percent of SRLP. That 3 percent royalty is deducted from the
artist’s 14 percent, leaving the artist a net royalty rate of only 11 percent of
SRLP. In industry parlance, the artist is said to have a “14 percent all-in
royalty rate” and also assumes responsibility for paying the producer’s royal-
ty from the artist’s royalty revenues.
See also ARTIST ROYALTY.
ALPERT, HERB. Herb Alpert was born on 31 March 1935 in Los Angeles.
He is a musician and entrepreneur best known as the leader of his own group,
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, which sold more than 70 million records,
mostly during the act’s heyday in the 1960s.
He was born in Los Angeles and studied trumpet growing up, simultane-
ously becoming interested in sound recording when he acquired an old wire
recorder. After graduating from high school, he served in the U.S. Army,
playing regularly at ceremonies and events. In the late 1950s, he tried his
hand at songwriting, cowriting a number of hit songs for other artists such as
Sam Cooke and Jan and Dean. His own recording career began as a vocalist,
but his passion for sound recording led him to build a recording studio in his
garage, where he experimented with overdubbing techniques that would lead
to his first hit, 1962’s “Lonely Bull,” which cracked the top 10. That same
year, Alpert and partner Jerry Moss started A&M Records, one of the most
artist-friendly independent record labels of the era. Alpert proved very adept
at both building up his label and continuing to develop his recording career.
Ironically, his first hit song featured him playing all the parts, and in time he
recruited top-notch session players to tour with him as his band.
Typical of many record labels of the era, in 1966 A&M built a state-of-the-
art recording and mastering complex in Hollywood that has been the location
for hundreds of seminal recordings. Over the next three decades, Alpert
would sign and develop new artists to the label, helping to launch the careers
of Janet Jackson, Sergio Mendes, the Carpenters, Sheryl Crow, Bryan Ad-
ams, Amy Grant, Soundgarden, and the Police, among many others. The
label eventually grew to become the largest independent record label in the
world. Although Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass officially disbanded in
1969, in the ensuing years Alpert would revive the group for the occasional
record releases in the ’70s and ’80s. In 1989, Alpert and Moss sold A&M to
PolyGram Records for a reported sum of $500 million.
In addition to his achievements as a recording artist and entrepreneur,
Alpert and his wife, Lani Hall, are dedicated philanthropists, donating mil-
lions of dollars on behalf of the arts and music education nonprofits. Alpert
holds the unique position of being the only artist to attain number one hits as
both an instrumentalist and a vocalist, as his 1969 rendition of “This Guy’s in
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF MUSICIANS (AFM) • 39
Love with You” topped the chart, as did his 1979 instrumental “Rise.” Still
performing into his 80s, he has received nine Grammy Awards, the most
recent for his 2014 release Steppin’ Out.
A-SIDE. A term developed in the 45-RPM era of the record industry used to
denote the track put out as the single by the record label. Most often, it is the
song that the record label believes will most likely become a hit.
See also B-SIDE.
46 • ATLANTIC RECORDS
ATLANTIC RECORDS. Atlantic Records was founded in 1947 in New
York City by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over the first 20 years of
their existence, Atlantic became one of the premiere U.S. independent
record labels, primarily known for rhythm and blues, soul, and jazz record-
ings by African American artists that topped the charts. Atlantic became
known for treating black artists better than many other labels of that era
while still profiting greatly from the hit records they released. In addition to
Ertegun, Atlantic became home to talented artist and repertoire representa-
tive Jerry Wexler, sound engineer Tom Dowd, and Miriam Abramson, who
managed the label’s music publishing division. Artists who rose to promi-
nence under the guidance of Atlantic Records included Ray Charles, Ruth
Brown, the Drifters, Bobby Darin, the Platters, LaVern Baker, Aretha
Franklin, John Coltrane, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett. Atlantic also profit-
ed greatly from an eight-year association with Memphis-based Stax Records,
whose raw, soulful recordings were marketed and distributed by Atlantic,
adding Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs,
and Sam and Dave to the Atlantic family. In 1967, Atlantic founder Ahmet
Ertegun, along with the rest of the label’s stockholders, sold Atlantic to
Warner Brothers. Ertegun would remain in an executive role at Atlantic
until his death. Soon after the label’s sale, they diversified their roster to
include rock and other progressive styles of music and would go on to release
many of the most successful groups of the 1970s and 1980s, including Cros-
by, Stills, Nash & Young, Led Zeppelin, the Bee Gees, Cream, Yes, Foreign-
er, the Rolling Stones, Genesis, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, AC/DC, and
many others. The label continues to operate today as a part of the Warner
Music Group.
BACKLINE. A term used most commonly in the live music industry, back-
line refers to musical equipment, such as drums, keyboards, amplifiers, and
other such gear, that is supplied by the concert promoter as part of their
contract with the artist performing at a concert. By requiring the promoter to
provide certain standard backline equipment, touring artists are able to re-
duce their costs.
49
50 • BASE PRICE TO DEALERS
combined Barnum’s successful marketing tactics with Bailey’s organization-
al prowess. Barnum was able to expand the geographical range of his circus
touring by being one of the first to travel by train.
As a result of Barnum’s ability to promote himself through mass media,
his autobiography, Life of P.T. Barnum (1854), was second to the Bible in
number of copies printed by the end of the 19th century.
BEACH BOYS, THE. The Beach Boys were a prominent pop group in the
1960s and 1970s known for their harmonies and catchy melodies. The group
originated in Southern California, near the Pacific Coast, and consisted of the
three brothers Brian Wilson (b. 1942), Dennis Wilson (1944–1983), and Carl
Wilson (1946–1988); their cousin Mike Love (b. 1941); and additional mem-
bers Al Jardine (b. 1942) and Bruce Johnson (b. 1944) from 1965.
The group released its first single, “Surfin’,” in 1961, which landed them
national attention and a contract with Capitol Records. The Wilsons’ father,
Murray Wilson, became the manager of the band. The group released its first
full-length album, Surfin’ Safari (1962), and brought attention to the surf
rock phenomenon then dominant in Southern California. The group’s second
album, Surfin’ U.S.A., hit the top 10 in 1963, largely on the strength of the
title track.
Brian Wilson is considered the creative force behind the group through
songwriting, recording, and producing. He was influenced by Phil Spector’s
“wall of sound” style, the Southern California surf music style, and 1950s
vocal acts, such as the Four Freshman. Brian stopped touring with the Beach
Boys in 1964 so that he could spend more time in the studio.
Songs such as “Help me Rhonda,” “Barbara Ann,” and “California Girls”
became top-five hits throughout 1965. In 1966, the Beach Boys released Pet
Sounds, which is viewed today as a groundbreaking album in the nearly
orchestral approach Brian Wilson took in creating the band’s denser sound.
However, the change from the sunny, straightforward surf paeans of their
earlier releases led to a lukewarm reception from the group’s U.S. fans when
compared to their previous releases. Later that year, they released a single
that was withheld from the Pet Sounds LP, “Good Vibrations,” which soared
to number one after Brian spent up to six months working on it in the studio.
Wilson called it his “pocket symphony,” and it eventually achieved Plati-
num sales.
Due to Brian’s mental health issues and the impact of the Beatles and
other British Invasion groups, the Beach Boys had a difficult time sustain-
ing a dedicated record-buying audience as music tastes changed. As a result,
BEATLES, THE • 51
the band put a pause on recording and focused on honing their live perfor-
mance act, which proved very successful. The one exception was the nostal-
gic track “Kokomo,” which topped the charts in 1988. The band has contin-
ued touring and releasing occasional recordings to this day led by Mike Love
and Bruce Johnson, without Brian Wilson. Wilson’s health has recovered
sufficiently so that he has released a number of well-received solo projects
and occasionally performs on his own.
BLACK BOX MONIES. Revenue that has been produced by songs that are
not registered in that territory to a specific publisher. This revenue then
resides in a theoretical “black box.” Black box monies are usually held for a
specified period of time (often three years) and then divided up among the
publishers in that country on a pro rata basis based on each firm’s overall
percentage of that country’s performing rights gross revenue.
BOY BANDS. Boy bands originated in the 1960s, most notably when the
Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time in 1964. They
were a group of four attractive young men who became very popular with
young girls, selling millions of albums during their career. In the Beatles’
case, their popularity long outlived their celebrity with teen girls, but the
formulaic boy bands of the past two decades capitalize on the same demo-
62 • BOY BANDS
graphic group and the frenzy of young girls. An important component to any
boy band’s success is a strong and well-connected artist manager who paves
the way for the band’s breakout and success.
After the Beatles, the Monkees gained popularity by not only releasing
music but reaching wider audiences and gaining exposure through a popular
television show in 1966. The Jackson Five was an African American group
of brothers who debuted in 1969 with Motown Records and eventually gave
rise to the youngest and most popular brother, Michael Jackson. In 1977,
Menudo, a Latin pop group with a rotating group of members, gained popu-
larity and in 1984 welcomed breakout star Ricky Martin. In 1988, New Kids
on the Block released their second album, Hangin’ Tough, which went
straight to number one, confirming the type of boy band that has become the
model for all similar groups to follow. In 1991, Boyz II Men released their
debut album, Cooleyhighharmony, introducing a more soulful R&B style
into the pop-dominated boy band genre. Throughout the late 1990s and early
2000s, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC were both incredibly popular and
sparked rivalry between die-hard fans of the bands. By the mid-2000s, Boyz
II Men, Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC had all broken up; in 2006, Disney
created the Jonas Brothers, bringing back a Monkees-style band with a sup-
porting TV show aimed at young girls. In 2011, the UK boy band One
Direction released its debut album after being featured on a television talent
show, The X Factor, and soon achieved worldwide stardom by relying on the
tried-and-true formula.
The notable characteristic of boy bands is their formulaic and predictable
approaches to the music industry. They are composed of young, usually
teenage boys and target even younger preteen girls. The band’s manager and
record label hold artistic control and manipulate the image of the band to
maximize success among its target audience. The boys maintain innocent,
young looks (long hair has been a tradition since the Beatles) and often have
sweet, romantic, but not overtly sexual songs. It is inevitable that both the
band members and fans will quickly outgrow these constraints. It’s not sur-
prising that fan bases dwindle, as very rarely do 16- or 17-year-old girls
want to keep allegiance to their 11-year-old interests. More recently, the
brand equity that remains for these aging boy bands allows them to carry
substantial nostalgic market value years down the line as women begin to
recall and romanticize their first celebrity crushes. This has led to a number
of reunions and reunion tours. In 2011, Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the
Block both reconciled and united for a joint album, NKOTBSB, and success-
ful tour. What they both once referred to as splits they now call hiatuses. This
has caused bands such as One Direction to publicly refer to their going
separate ways as merely a break, as the band and their manager realize that
some time down the road their boy band image will become nostalgic and
therefore ripe for another cycle of exploitation through tours and recordings.
BRILL BUILDING • 63
BRAUN, SCOOTER. Scott “Scooter” Braun was born on 18 June 1981 in
New York City and is best known as an artist manager and music entrepren-
eur responsible for helping a number of pop artists, including Justin Bieber
and Ariana Grande. He attended college in Atlanta and soon became notable
for planning and hosting large-scale parties, including those affiliated with
2002 music tours by artists Eminem and Ludacris. His work came to the
attention of music producer Jermaine Dupri, who invited Braun to join So So
Def Records while Braun was still attending college. Eventually, Braun left
the label to start his own firm, launching with a $12 million endorsement deal
between Ludacris and Pontiac. A 12-year-old, Justin Bieber, came to the
attention of Braun via YouTube, and Braun invited Bieber and his mother to
enter into a trial working agreement. With Braun’s direction, the teen star
soon had built a substantial YouTube following, which led to Braun broker-
ing a record deal with Island Def Jam Records. Based in Atlanta, Georgia,
Braun developed close ties to Usher Raymond, and the two operate a joint
venture today, Raymond Braun Media Group, that handles the career of
Bieber and a number of other artists. Braun also established SB Projects, a
full-service marketing and entertainment company that covers label services,
publishing, and marketing.
BRILL BUILDING. The Brill Building was the nexus of popular music
songwriting in the 1950s and 1960s and was located at 1619 Broadway in
New York City. It became the direct successor to the Tin Pan Alley area in
the city and was the hub favored by music publishers keen to tap into the
growing success of popular music as postwar teens claimed pop music for
their own. The Brill Building was literally a warren comprising dozens of
tiny offices and cubicles where collaboration occurred constantly between a
wide range of musicians and other creatives. It became home to the most
successful songwriters, producers, and music publishers of the day, who,
64 • BRITISH INVASION
like their Tin Pan Alley predecessors, would come into the office, sit down at
the piano and note pad, and craft popular songs to suit the times and mood of
America.
Brill Building output would go on to top the charts with angst-ridden teen
pop, Latin pop, girl group anthems, doo-wop, soul, and rock music. Among
the most successful writers to work there were Leiber & Stoller, Pomus &
Shuman, King & Goffin, Bacharach & David, Sedaka & Greenfield, Weil &
Mann, and Greenwich & Barry. Notably, the great majority were in their
early 20s, just a few years older than the artists who were making their songs
famous. Music publishers also had offices nearby and usually would secure
the most promising songwriters under contract to create new music exclu-
sively for their publishing firm. Producers regularly stopped in, or took of-
fices in the building, in order to get first crack at the latest songs being
created. The concept of an integrated creative music environment gained
further significance when some of the participants started their own record
labels, such as Leiber & Stoller’s Red Bird Records, to further exploit their
songs for financial gain.
B-SIDE. Because 45-RPM records have two sides, a second song would be
included on each side, with the B-side cut most often being considered
worthy of being an album cut, that is, not up to the standards of being an A-
side or single. The Beatles notably released “We Can Work It Out”/“Day
Tripper” in 1965 as a double A-sided single, leaving it up to radio deejays to
determine which song to play. Both became hits.
73
74 • CAPSHAW, CORAN
CAPSHAW, CORAN. Robert Coran Capshaw was born on 28 May 1958
and attended school at the University of Virginia. He is best known as an
artist manager, entrepreneur, and real estate developer. In the early 1990s, he
owned a bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he gave a young Dave Mat-
thews Band their first regular employment. He recognized the band’s poten-
tial and in 1991 began managing them, a position he holds to this day. He
would go on to found artist management firm Red Light Management and
Starr Hill Presents, cofound ATO Records, and formerly served as CEO of
Music Today, one of the leader merchandising and fulfillment companies in
the music business. His reputation as a creative deal maker extends beyond
the normal range of artist manager activities, for example, his work to help
Matthews establish the Dreaming Tree wine brand, which boasts an impres-
sive $85 million in annual sales. Capshaw also manages Alicia Keys, Lady
Antebellum, Phish, Luke Bryan, and Trey Anastasio, in addition to oversee-
ing a wide range of real estate investments and properties in the Charlottes-
ville region.
CASUAL FAN. A casual fan is one who knows of a particular artist and has
often heard their music. They have generally not intentionally sought out the
artist or their music, instead being exposed to it through terrestrial radio, a
playlist, or hearing it while doing some other activity.
See also FAN ENGAGEMENT.
CHART. Any form of musical notation that can be shared with one or more
musicians or sidemen in order to perform a work. Alternately, popular songs
and albums are listed on various charts to measure their sales or popularity,
such as those compiled weekly by Billboard magazine.
COMBO STORE. A particular type of music products retail store that gen-
erally stocks, sells, and services all of the necessary musical instruments and
accessories needed by a rock band. This normally encompasses guitars,
basses, amplifiers, drums, sound systems, recording equipment, keyboards,
and lighting equipment. While there are thousands of independent combo
stores across the nation, two large big box chains, Guitar Center and Sam
Ash Music, are dominant players in the combo store segment, boasting many
urban locations, large stores, and discounted pricing. For most combo stores,
fretted instruments make up a significant portion of their gross sales. The
National Association of Music Merchandisers’ 2015 Global Music Report
cites annual U.S. fretted instrument sales at an estimated retail value of $1.86
billion.
84 • COMBS, SEAN “PUFFY”
COMBS, SEAN “PUFFY”. Sean “Puffy” Combs (a.k.a. Puff Daddy, P.
Diddy, Diddy, Brother Love, and Love) was born in Harlem, New York, on 4
November 1969. He is an entrepreneur, producer, and recording artist. In
1993, he launched his music production company, Bad Boy Entertainment.
The label has worked with artists such as Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige,
TLC, Boyz II Men, Lil’ Kim, Aretha Franklin, and the Notorious B.I.G.
He was named the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Pub-
lishers’ Songwriter of the Year in 1996. By 1997, Bad Boy Entertainment
had sold $100 million in recordings, and Combs had handed over manage-
ment of the label to Arista Records in a well-publicized multimillion-dollar
deal.
Combs rose to prominence in the mid-1990s. In 1997, his album No Way
Out achieved Platinum status thanks in large part to his moving tribute to
Biggie Smalls, “I’ll be Missing You.” In 1999, Combs released his second
album, Forever, and launched a highly successful clothing line called Sean
John, signaling his business savvy as one of the first artists to skillfully
develop a range of ancillary product lines that leveraged his mass-market
popularity into major earnings. These have included forays into the fra-
grance, hospitality, and beverage sectors. In addition to his music endeavors,
Combs has appeared frequently in film and television acting roles and has
produced a number of television series, most notably MTV’s Making the
Band.
COMMITTED FAN. A committed fan is one that has made some type of
discretionary purchase of an artist’s music, concert ticket, or merchandise or
even offered support to a fan-funding initiative launched by the artist. They
feel some level of connection to the artist and their music and most often will
spend some time researching or keeping up with the artist via whatever forms
of media and information retrieval the committed fan is most familiar with
using.
See also FAN ENGAGEMENT.
COMPOSER • 85
COMPACT CASSETTE. A sound recording and reproduction technology
developed by Phillips and intended to be used as a convenient way to take
care of office dictation, similar to Edison’s original recording cylinder. Com-
monly referred to simply as a cassette, the format used eighth-inch wide
magnetic recording tape and utilized four discrete tracks to provide a bidirec-
tional playback equating to the A-side and B-side of a vinyl album. Cassettes
equaled vinyl in record sales during the 1980s, and eclipsed the earlier 8-
track tape format, which had become popular in car stereo systems in the
1970s. Cassettes were supplanted by compact discs by the late 1980s as the
preferred record delivery format, although in many territories, especially in
Asia, the cassette is still a significant record release medium.
COON SONGS. A genre of songs popular from 1880 to 1920 that purported
to mimic and satirize typical African American speech and conventions of
the period. When considered today, the songs would be viewed as over-
whelmingly pejorative as they frequently played on then common stereo-
types about blacks, such as their being lazy, oversexed, dishonest, or danger-
ous. Coons songs were very popular and were written by both white and
black songwriters. At their peak of popularity in the 1890s, coon songs were
performed all across America and even incorporated into legitimate theatrical
productions. Musically, the songs often drew on the foundations of ragtime,
a precursor to jazz.
CUE, EDDY. Eduardo H. “Eddy” Cue (b. 1964) is best known as Apple
Computer’s senior vice president of internet software and services. He stud-
ied economics and computer science at Duke University. Cue joined Apple
in 1989 and worked as a manager in both customer support and software
engineering. He worked his way up at the firm and was a key player in the
development of Apple’s online store (1998), the iTunes music store (2003),
Apple’s App Store (2008), and Apple Pay (2014). He is viewed as one of the
key architects of Apple’s move to an integrated media and electronics com-
pany from its original role as a computer manufacturer.
DAVIS, CLIVE. Clive Davis was born on 4 April 1932 in Brooklyn, New
York. He is best known as a music executive and talent development special-
ist. From 1966 to today, he has served as president of a number of major
record labels. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1956, he
worked as an attorney in New York City and joined Columbia Records as a
staff attorney in 1960. Rising through the ranks, he was made president of
CBS Records in 1966 at the age of 34. Over the course of his career, he has
signed some of the most commercially successful artists in popular music,
including Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston,
Aretha Franklin, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jennifer Hud-
son, Kelly Clarkson, and Brad Paisley. He has also fostered other music
executives by cofounding LaFace Records with Antonio “LA” Reid and
Babyface, as well as Bad Boy Entertainment with Sean “Puffy” Combs. In
addition to his business acumen, Davis is renowned for being able to decide
which songs have the potential to become hit singles for his key artists,
deciding which tracks will be chosen to market in this regard. Davis held
tenure as chief executive officer from 1966 to 1973 at CBS Records, 1974 to
2000 at Arista Records, 2000 to 2004 at J Records, 2002 to 2008 at RCA
Music Group, and 2008 to now at Sony Music Entertainment.
95
96 • DEF JAM RECORDS
DEF JAM RECORDS. Def Jam was founded in 1984 by Rick Rubin, then
a student at New York University. He teamed up with Russell Simmons,
who was already a promoter and was able to connect several artists with the
record label.
Def Jam altered the music industry by making rap music by artists such as
LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Run-DMC accessible to wider audiences—
especially white audiences.
Rubin parted ways with Def Jam records in 1988. In 1992, Def Jam almost
faced financial ruin but was saved by PolyGram when the company pur-
chased 50 percent of Sony’s share in Def Jam. In 1998, Def Jam was ac-
quired by Universal Music Group by purchasing the remaining shares from
Simmons. During this time, DMX was a very successful artist under Def Jam
and brought in a revival of hardcore hip hop.
In 2004, Jay-Z became the president of Def Jam. During his three-year
tenure, Jay-Z helped to usher the successful careers of Rihanna and Ne-Yo.
Today, Def Jam contracts with an impressive list of artists, including Kanye
West, Justin Bieber, Leona Lewis, and Iggy Izalea.
DIXIE CHICKS. The Dixie Chicks are a country music group that has
been recognized as one of the best-selling female music groups in American
popular music. In addition to their outstanding sales, they are noted for their
dynamic live performances. The group was originally formed in 1989 as a
quartet. In 1995, Laura Lynch (bass) and Robin Macy (guitar) left the group
and Natalie Maines (vocals) was invited to join sisters Marti Maguire (violin)
and Emily Robison (banjo). Maguire’s and Robison’s virtuosity on their
instruments coupled with Maines’s modern country vocal style and more
contemporary songwriting approach propelled the group to a more modern
and commercial country sound.
The group released the debut album Wide Open Spaces in 1998, which
featured three number one country hits: “There’s Your Trouble,” “Wide
Open Spaces,” and “You Were Mine.” The album went quadruple Platinum
in its first year and won several Grammy and Country Music Association
(CMA) awards. It eventually became country music’s best-selling group al-
bum of all time. The Dixie Chicks released Fly in 1999. The album showed
the group’s evolving style, with songs addressing somewhat controversial
topics in mainstream country on tunes, such as “Goodbye Earl” (spousal
abuse) and “Sin Wagon” (infidelity).
The combined success of their first two albums made them the best-selling
female group in country music with more than 20 million albums sold,
prompting the group’s management to review their royalty payment history
with their label. Upon review, the group believed they had been underpaid by
as much as $4 million in royalties due to flawed accounting practices. The
label, Sony Music, denied the claim, and a lawsuit and resultant countersuit
between the two parties went ahead. The press covered the dispute, which
served to shine a light on the less-than-transparent accounting practices that
were standard throughout much of the recording industry, while also alerting
other artists to pay special attention to their royalty statements and audit
reports. After months of dispute, a settlement was finally reached although
no financial terms were disclosed with respect to any unpaid royalties due.
The Dixie Chicks had won a new, higher royalty rate, artistic control of their
music, and the establishment of their own label imprint, Wide Open Records,
which would be marketed and distributed by Sony. On the heels of the
100 • DJ (DEEJAY)
settlement, the group’s next album was Home in 2002, which included three
more hit singles: “Travelin’ Soldier,” “Long Time Gone,” and “Landslide.”
The album would sell six million copies in the United States.
In 2003, at the opening concert in London of their Top of the World Tour,
Maines spoke against the impending Iraq War and expressed disappointment
with fellow Texan and then-president George W. Bush. The public backlash
to this statement from American fans was virulent and highly publicized as
an example of not supporting the nation’s fight against terrorism. Country
radio boycotted their music, and as their tour progressed the group was on the
receiving end of death threats and protests, which included numerous public
meetings at which fans threw away their Dixie Chicks CDs. The experience
was documented in a 2006 film titled Shut Up and Sing that showed the price
the group would pay for holding firm to their opinion that war was not the
best option.
Concluding the tour, the Dixie Chicks realized that their core country
audience was unlikely to return to its earlier level, and as artists they also felt
obliged to reflect the struggles they had encountered for exercising their right
of free speech in whatever new music would come next. This resulted in the
group’s 2006 album Taking the Long Way, which was a critical and commer-
cial success but paled in any sales comparison to their three previous albums.
Taking the Long Way would eventually sell two million copies and win five
Grammy Awards, three of which are largely viewed as the most important:
Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year. Country radio
programmers largely ignored the record, likely due to corporate radio’s per-
ception that they had veered outside the limits of what had traditionally been
accepted country music values.
The group decided to go on a hiatus to spend time with their families,
which resulted in the Dixie Chicks making only a few sporadic public ap-
pearances during the period 2008–2013. However, sisters Robison and Ma-
guire formed a new band, the Court Yard Hounds. The new group was
preparing for an album release and tour, but plans changed, with the Dixie
Chicks announcing a limited series of 2010 summer stadium concert appear-
ances in support of the Eagles and Keith Urban. The Court Yard Hounds
released two albums (2010 and 2013) while lead singer Natalie Maines re-
leased her own album in 2013. The group announced its first official headlin-
ing tour in 2013 through Canada and in 2016 fully returned to the stage with
U.S., Canadian, and European tour dates. The U.S. stadium shows were the
first headlining concerts in 10 years for the record-setting group.
DR. DRE. Andre Romelle “Dr. Dre” Young was born in 1965 in Los An-
geles. He is a producer, rapper, and entrepreneur. Growing up in and around
Compton, California, an area with high unemployment and crime, he strug-
gled in school. After high school, he was enrolled in an adult school while
starting to freelance as a club DJ, meet other rappers, and produce his first
recordings. Partnered with DJ Yella, he soon developed his stage name, Dr.
Dre, after meeting the rapper Ice Cube, who introduced him to Ruthless
Records, a rap imprint run by rapper Eazy-E. It was here that Dre rose to
104 • DR. DRE
prominence as the in-house music producer for the label’s artists and as a
member of the seminal West Coast rap group N.W.A, a progenitor of what
came to be called “gangsta rap.”
Dre developed a style and sound that relied on heavy use of samples, quick
edits, and a thunderous drum machine and low-frequency sounds that was
well suited to LA’s car culture. N.W.A’s debut album, Straight Outta Comp-
ton (1988), was a smash hit, even though it received virtually no airplay due
to the gritty and obscenity-laden lyrics that depicted in a truthful way the
struggles of black men growing up surrounded by poverty and violence. Dre
decided to leave Ruthless Records over a financial dispute and moved to
Death Row Records, where he continued as in-house music producer but also
released his own debut as a solo artist in 1992, titled The Chronic. This
album’s triple Platinum and Grammy-winning success topped his previous
accomplishments with N.W.A and established Dr. Dre as one of the most
successful rap producers in the world. It also launched the career of rapper
Snoop Dogg, who was featured on the album’s most successful tracks. Im-
portantly, commercial radio embraced Dre’s music, and songs such as “Let
Me Ride” and “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” were programmed in heavy rota-
tion at many urban radio stations, resulting in the album spending eight
months in the Billboard Top 10. Snoop Dogg’s raps floated over music
tracks that included numerous samples, live performance on guitar and bass
and 10-year-old keyboard and synthesizers, use of vocoder to enhance the
vocal track, and various high-pitched synthesizer riffs, all blended into what
Dre dubbed his own “G-Funk” sound. Following on the heels of The Chron-
ic, he produced and released Snoop Dogg’s own debut, 1993’s Doggystyle,
which became the first rap album to debut at number one on the Billboard
charts. Dre produced the debut single, “California Love,” for Tupac Shakur
before leaving Death Row in 1996 to start his own label, Aftermath Enter-
tainment, with distribution through Interscope Records.
Aftermath initially struggled until, on the advice of Interscope head Jim-
my Iovine, Dre signed a young white rapper named Eminem. Dre produced
three tracks on Eminem’s 1999 debut, The Slim Shady LP, which rose to
number two on the charts and revived Aftermath financially. Dre returned to
the mic for 2001, his second solo foray released the same year, which went
on to six-times Platinum sales and Dre being recognized with the Producer of
the Year Grammy Award. Following the success of 2001, Dre focused pri-
marily on producing other artists, including more tracks with his protégé
Eminem, Mary J. Blige, his next protégé 50 Cent, Jay-Z, the Game, and
Kendrick Lamar.
Iovine and Dre developed the concept for a line of headphones in 2006,
eventually marketed under the Beats by Dr. Dre name upon its 2008 launch,
which became very popular with younger consumers familiar with his music,
in part through an aggressive program of endorsements from top performers,
DYLAN, BOB • 105
including Lady Gaga. Through savvy partnerships, Beats Electronics grew
to earn $1 billion in sales by 2013, by which time Beats had committed to
providing an end-to-end listening experience for consumers by its purchase
of MOG online music service, signifying Dre and Iovine’s intent to become
an integrated music company with more than headphones to offer the market.
Beats Music, a subscription-only paid music streaming service, launched
in 2014, and soon after Dre and Iovine started negotiations with Apple
Computer, leading to Apple’s August 2014 acquisition of Beats for a re-
ported $3 billion dollars and keeping Dre and Iovine on as senior executives
with Apple’s music division. In June 2015, Beats Music was shuttered simul-
taneously with the launch of Apple Music. Dr. Dre adroitly moved from his
role as one of the most successful rap music producers to a successful music
entrepreneur and company founder.
107
108 • EDISON, THOMAS (1847–1931)
30 October 1947) taking over for Randy Meissner in 1977. The group’s next
album, The Long Run (1979), sold more than seven million copies and had
three top 10 singles, including the group’s last number one single to date,
“Heartache Tonight.”
Not surprisingly, after being together nonstop for nine years through tours,
albums, recordings, and business dealings, individual members of the group,
with financial security well in hand, found themselves in frequent arguments,
leading to the band’s breakup in 1980.
As it would happen, the Eagles decided to reunite in 1994 under the
guidance of Azoff, who saw the opportunity for the group to cash in on their
fans’ loyalty in what had become the increasingly lucrative era of megatours.
From 1994 to 2001, the group toured and released two albums, Hell Freezes
Over and a box set titled Selected Works, 1972–1999 (2000), the latter of
which included a selection of Eagles’ hits, a live concert album, and addi-
tional music from the Hell Freezes Over sessions. Both would achieve Plati-
num certification.
Another hiatus followed from 2001 to 2007, with the band returning with
the album Long Road Out of Eden (2007), which went on to sell seven
million copies even though it was available only on the band’s website and at
Walmart in the United States. The band continued to tour selectively through
summer 2011, at which point they stopped touring, due in part to Glenn
Frey’s health difficulties. In February 2013, the career-spanning documen-
tary film History of the Eagles was released and chronicled the band’s rise to
fame, including the high and lows of their 40-plus-year career.
ELECTRIC GUITAR. The rise of rock ’n’ roll music in America is inter-
twined closely with the emergence of the electric guitar in the 1950s and
1960s as the most popular, affordable, and accessible musical instrument,
appealing to generations of teens and young adults.
Unlike an acoustic guitar, the electric guitar uses a magnetic pickup to
convert the vibration of its strings, which are normally picked or strummed,
into electrical impulses, which are then amplified. The first practical electric
guitar, dubbed the “Frying Pan” due to its cast aluminum body, was built by
George Beauchamp in 1931 and entered commercial production in 1932 at
the Rickenbacker Guitar Company in Los Angeles.
In 1936, the Gibson Guitar Co. introduced the ES-150 Electric Spanish
guitar, which included an amplifier for its $150 retail price. In 1940, Les
Paul created his famous prototype “Log guitar,” a four-by-four-inch piece of
wood with pickups, neck, bridge, and strings attached, which became the
earliest prototype for his signature Les Paul guitar, which would be intro-
duced in 1952 and is still in production today. While guitarists such as Les
Paul, Alvino Ray, and Charlie Christian were popular artists of the 1940s and
1950s, it was the advent of rock ’n’ roll music and performers such as Chuck
Berry, Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley, and Buddy Holly who by the 1950s were
the visible proof that the electric guitar was the most significant musical
instrument used in the new music’s creation.
When the Beatles made their historic television appearance on The Ed
Sullivan Show in 1964, their reliance on the electric guitar to forge their
sound further enshrined the instrument as the most sought after, essential
element needed for rock music-making. Adding to the electric guitar’s ac-
cessibility, major retail catalogs offered a full range of electric guitars and
amplifiers that could be ordered through the mail and delivered coast-to-
coast. Today, collectors and professionals prize electric guitars and amplifi-
ers sold in the 1960s such as Montgomery Wards’ Airline brand as well those
made under Sears’ Silvertone brand. The market for electric guitars is still
one of the healthiest segments of the overall music products industry, with
the National Association of Music Merchandisers’ 2015 Global Music
Report showing 1.13 million electric guitars sold with a retail value of $505
million.
FAIR USE. Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code pertains to fair use and
was introduced in 1976. The fair use doctrine is a legal exception to a copy-
right infringement claim. It essentially allows creators minimal use of copy-
right-protected material for specific purposes. The legitimacy of a fair use
claim is determined on a case-by-case basis and includes four factors:
In the music industry, the third factor, the amount and substantiality of the
portion used, is often critical to deciding cases involving the issue of plagiar-
ism of musical works, such as lyrics or melodies.
There continues to be ongoing debate regarding the third fair use factor,
which pertains to the amount and substantiality of the portion taken. Sam-
pling and quoting have always been common practices. At times, these prac-
tices have led to accusations of plagiarism and infringement, such as the
2015 litigation and judgment in the “Blurred Lines” copyright infringement
case.
119
120 • FAN ENGAGEMENT
FAN ENGAGEMENT. “Fan engagement” is a term widely used in the
music industry to denote the level of commitment that an individual fan, or
group of fans, demonstrates. While there are various descriptors used to
understand how an individual fan’s commitment deepens, three levels of fan
engagement may be used to outline such growth. A casual fan is one who
knows of a particular artist and has often heard their music. A committed
fan is one who has made some type of discretionary purchase of an artist’s
music, concert ticket, or merchandise or even offered support to a crowd-
funding initiative. A super fan is one who feels a deep, personalized con-
nection to the artist. They act as a champion and tell their friends about the
artist as they take multiple opportunities to engage in supporting the artist
and the artist’s musical and other endeavors. For music managers, learning
how to help move someone who has never heard of the artist to become a
casual fan, and then providing relevant and meaningful content to that fan in
order to help nudge them toward the next level of fan engagement, has
become one of the most important tasks of a modern music manager.
FIRST SALE DOCTRINE. The first sale doctrine (Section 109[a] of Copy-
right Code) encourages the dissemination of creative works and allows the
owner of a legally acquired physical copy (such as a sound recording or piece
of sheet music) to legally sell or transfer ownership or dispose of the item.
Libraries and video rental businesses rely on the first sale doctrine to operate
legally.
See also COPYRIGHT.
FIRST USE. The original songwriter has exclusive control over who will
make the first recording of a new song, hence the term “first use” in regard to
this original recording. Once the song has been recorded and distributed
publicly as a phonorecord, then the song is subject to being recorded again
via the issuance of a compulsory mechanical license.
FISK JUBILEE SINGERS. The Fisk Jubilee Singers (also known as the
Jubilee Singers and the Fisk Singers) is an African American choral ensem-
ble that established the black (“Negro”) spiritual within American music
history. The ensemble pushed racial boundaries by performing for predomi-
nately white audiences and served as a model for subsequent African
American music groups.
The group was established in 1871 by musical director George L. White
(1838–1895) as an effort to generate funds for the struggling Fisk University
in Nashville, Tennessee, which offered a college education to freed slaves
following the end of the American Civil War.
After an exhausting start in which white audiences were not sure what to
make of the group because they were accustomed to blackface and minstrel
shows, White named the group the Jubilee Singers in reference to the Old
Testament’s book of Leviticus, which describes a “year of jubilee” when all
122 • FITZGERALD, ELLA (1917–1996)
slaves are freed. As they continued performing, audience appreciation for the
group grew, and at the end of their first six-month tour, the funds raised were
able to help Fisk University become financially stable.
They often sang a cappella, and their repertoire included slave songs,
Stephen Foster songs, and spirituals written and sung in black communities.
Segregation and racism were major challenges for the ensemble, especially
when it came to finding restaurants and lodgings that would permit African
Americans. They rejected the stereotypes that were promoted by blackface
minstrelsy, and they always appeared dignified and well mannered.
The ensemble received national attention after an invited performance at
Patrick S. Gilmore’s Second World Peace Jubilee in Boston in 1872. This
was followed by a New England tour and an invitation to perform at the
White House for President Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1873, the Jubilee Singers toured Great Britain and Europe and per-
formed for Queen Victoria. She was greatly impressed by the group. They
returned to Europe soon after and raised enough funds to build Fisk’s first
permanent building, which was named Jubilee Hall and is now designated a
National Historic Landmark.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers remain an important part of Fisk University to
this day. The ensemble was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in
2000 and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2008.
FREED, ALAN (1921–1965). Albert James “Alan” Freed was a radio DJ,
concert promoter, and entrepreneur. He was one of the first entrepreneurs to
realize the unprecedented commercial success that the newly emerging rock
’n’ roll music would achieve.
Freed broke into radio playing classical and light pop fare between 1942
and 1950 before he rose to prominence as one of the first disc jockeys to
introduce rhythm and blues to a white teenage audience. After a move to
Cleveland in 1951, a local record store owner noticed the steadily increasing
sales of rhythm and blues records at his shop and offered to sponsor a radio
show devoted solely to that music. Freed signed on and soon transformed
himself into what was known as a “personality jock” by interjecting his
dynamic personality throughout the broadcast among the energetic, dance-
oriented R&B tracks. This had the intended effect of creating the impression
that he was hosting a wild party in the studio each night, much to his listen-
ers’ delight. Freed’s teen audience responded, and the show became a smash
hit, bringing increased clout to Freed.
After one of many salary disputes Freed engaged in with station manage-
ment over the course of his career, he left Cleveland and moved on to New
York City, where he began hosting a similar show to an even larger audience
and gaining national prominence that led to hosting his own short-lived
weekly musical television series, The Big Beat. Freed claimed and is often
credited as coining the term “rock and roll,” although evidence to support the
claim is scant and the phrase had been commonly used well before Freed
became popular. Freed leveraged his notoriety as a taste-making radio star to
also promote concerts, including his infamous 1952 Moondog Coronation
Ball in Cleveland, which drew more than 30,000 fans to the Cleveland Are-
na, which had only a 10,000-person capacity. While the dance had to be
FREEMIUM • 129
canceled and ended in a melee between upset teens and police, it is largely
viewed as being the first rock ’n’ roll concert in history. Importantly, Freed
also allowed black and white teens to mix at his concerts, a practice that
many found distasteful at that time.
Freed would also partner with Hollywood to produce a series of inexpen-
sive teen movies in the 1950s that championed rock ’n’ roll and portrayed
wholesome white teens enjoying performances by black and white perform-
ers. These films featured many of the artists with whom he had close busi-
ness ties, nearly all of whom were on smaller independent record labels. In
1960, Congress began public hearings into the practice of payola, which
Freed subscribed to, as did other influential disc jockeys of that era. Corpo-
rate radio went out of its way to try to stamp out the long-established prac-
tice, but Freed answered honestly about the so-called consulting fees he
regularly accepted from record labels, managers, and artists, including cut-in
interest in song copyrights.
Disc jockeys were all asked to sign an affidavit testifying that they didn’t
engage in payola, and Freed declined to do so and was soon fired. Concur-
rently, although thousands of other disc jockeys engaged in payola, nearly all
of them walked away with little more than a small fine or a caution to halt the
practice. Although Freed found work at Los Angeles station KDAY, he was
soon found guilty and the media spotlight focused on his guilt. After his
return to work, it was his insistence in continuing to promote concerts with
artists he had business relationships with that led to his termination from
KDAY, as the station viewed such business activity as a conflict of interest.
With his health in decline due to alcohol abuse and a significant number of
legal bills to pay, plus investigations for tax avoidance by the government,
Freed never returned to the broadcast airwaves. However, he was instrumen-
tal in helping R&B music cross over to a largely white audience and seeing
the synergy that could be created between radio, concerts, and motion pic-
tures to promote new talent.
GEIGER, MARC. Marc Paul Geiger was born in Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey, on 11 October 1962. He is best known as a talent agent and entrepren-
eur and cofounder of Lollapalooza and ARTISTdirect, one of the first
online digital media entertainment firms. He attended college in San Diego,
where he booked on-campus concerts and started a vinyl record co-op, spe-
cializing in dance remixes. While still a student, he joined a local promoter,
Avalon Attractions, and learned the concert promotion business.
133
134 • GERSHWIN, GEORGE (1898–1937)
Upon graduation in 1983, he moved to Los Angeles and became a booking
agent at Regency Artists, where he spent seven years developing their alter-
native artist roster to include bands such as Jane’s Addiction, the Pixies, the
Smiths, and New Order. He left Regency to join Rick Rubin’s American
Recordings in 1991 as executive vice president of artist and repertoire,
marketing, and new media. His entrepreneurial drive continued, as it was
during this time he purchased the Ultimate Band List, one of the first music-
oriented database directories, which featured more than 600,000 bands, con-
certs, events, and music-related entries.
In 1996, Geiger cofounded ARTISTdirect, the first direct-to-consumer,
artist-oriented digital music distribution company. Leading the firm, Geiger
signed digital distribution agreements with 130 leading artists and added two
labels and a management arm to the company. He left in 2003 to join
William Morris Endeavor (WME), where he rose to his current position as
head of the music division. In that capacity, he oversees the company’s
global music activities. He is also still directly involved in booking for WME
artists such as Lady Gaga, Jack White, Tony Bennett, and Trent Reznor.
GIRL TALK. Girl Talk is the moniker of Gregg Gillis, a New York City DJ
and remixer. Gillis was born on 26 October 1981 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
nia. Girl Talk creates his music on his laptop by seamlessly sampling and
remixing music from a variety of genres over a catchy beat. He began
working under the name Girl Talk in 2000 and released his first album,
Secret Diary, in 2002 under the provocatively named label Illegal Art. Each
subsequent album has progressively gotten more complex and intricate,
creating what could be described as a pop collage.
Some see Girl Talk’s music as a political statement about the issues with
current copyright law and how it restricts artists’ creativity. He offers his
albums for free via download and considers his work fair use. Despite skirt-
ing the limits of legality, he has not faced any legal challenges to date.
Girl Talk has a busy touring schedule as a DJ and plays at a variety of
venues and music festivals.
GRATEFUL DEAD. The Grateful Dead were a rock group that originated
in the San Francisco Bay Area and became best known for their legendary
extended improvisational concerts, some of which lasted for three to five
hours, and for their extensive audience of super fans, who earned the moni-
ker “Deadheads.” These loyal fans followed the band throughout their
lengthy career, helping them to become one of the most financially success-
ful groups of the second half of the 20th century, largely via their touring and
the eventual release of many of the group’s earlier concert recordings, to
which they held the rights.
The original members of the group included Jerry Garcia (1942–1995),
Bob Weir (b. Robert Hall, 16 October 1947), Phil Lesh (b. Philip Chapman,
15 March 1940), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (1945–1973), and Bill Kreutz-
142 • GRATEFUL DEAD
mann (b. 7 June 1946). Over the group’s career, many additional members
would join the band to augment its lineup; however, it was drummer and
percussionist Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, 11 September
1943) who would join the group in September 1967 and infuse their music
with additional world music influences. The group’s heyday spanned from
1965 to 1995 with Garcia as the group’s figurehead, and they continued to
perform in altered lineups after Garcia’s death under the name the Dead in
2003, 2004, and 2009. A historic 50th anniversary five-concert series featur-
ing the group’s four surviving original members was staged in 2015, which
was billed as the group’s final performances.
The Grateful Dead’s rise occurred as a part of the counterculture and
psychedelic movements that were most notably occurring from 1965 to 1970
in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. The Grateful Dead played fre-
quent concerts, including a number of free outdoor shows, and built an early
following that appreciated the group’s loose, laid-back style. Musically, the
Grateful Dead had a wide range of influences, including blues, jazz, jug
band, honky-tonk, and gospel. Importantly, the group itself embraced the
freewheeling hippie lifestyle, which included the use of drugs to help en-
hance musical creativity. Performing at a series of concerts that featured free
LSD for the audience members and known as “acid tests,” the Grateful Dead
became the most iconic group of the counterculture movement at that time in
San Francisco. They became the model for what would become widely
known as the jam band genre of music, emulated by many later groups,
including Phish, the String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic, and Dave
Matthews Band.
Throughout their career, the band focused mainly on their unique extended
concert performances, which often featured near-symphonic structure with
one lengthy song filled with individual and group improvisation segueing
seamlessly into the next. Still, at various times during their career, they did
sign record contracts with major labels, most notably with Warner Broth-
ers and later Arista, with the stipulation that the band had to retain full
creative control of the recording process and ownership of their master
recordings and song publishing rights.
From 1965 to 1995, the group released 13 studio albums and nine live
albums. Twelve of these albums would go on to earn Gold or Platinum
status, in large part due to the loyal audience the band had developed by
extensive touring. The group had six singles that made the top 100 charts,
with 1987’s “Touch of Grey” being the highest charting song, hitting number
one on the Mainstream Rock Chart and number nine on the top 100. Among
their albums, American Beauty (1970), the live set Europe 72 (1972), and
Into the Dark (1987) each sold more than two million copies.
GRATEFUL DEAD • 143
When the group would announce their tours, fans would use word of
mouth and the telephone to share the news with other Deadheads, many of
whom would drop whatever they were doing for a certain period of time to
follow the band from city to city to enjoy multiple concerts over the course of
weeks or even months. The fans often traveled together in cars or vans and
by hitchhiking, wearing colorful tie-dyed clothing and camping near the
concert venues; forming a virtual community of like-minded music lovers for
the duration of each tour, creating a Grateful Dead subculture that helped
sustain the band financially. Tickets were often made available directly from
the band’s Marin County office via mail order, with fans sending in payment
and receiving their tickets back in the mail shortly after they were offered for
sale.
One of the reasons fans appreciated the band so much is that no two
concerts were ever identical, unlike the majority of successful touring acts,
who presented a tightly planned set list that was rarely changed from show to
show. Another important phenomenon that developed around the band was
the culture of fans using their own recording equipment inside the concerts to
record each of the band’s performances. This was done with the band’s
blessing and created a tape-exchange culture in which nearly every one of the
band’s estimated 2,300 concerts was taped and traded among their most loyal
fans. At one point, so many fans were coming to tape the concerts that a
special “taper” ticket was made available on a limited basis, and a section of
each venue was reserved for the tapers to work directly behind the sound-
board.
Interestingly, this free access and use of the band’s live performances
created ever greater interest in the band and its music rather than reducing
interest or income for the group. Recognizing the vitality and scope of their
fans’ interest in their live recordings, in 1991 the Grateful Dead launched
their own series of limited-edition live releases from the band’s extensive
archival collection of concert recordings. To date, they have released more
than 100 archives-based albums, both on CD and as internet downloads
available for purchase directly from the band’s website.
Two other facts are notable about the Grateful Dead. The first is that they
became one of the first groups to recognize and capitalize on the power of
graphic images to help make their brand stand out in the marketplace.
Through a series of logo artwork, the most famous of which is the well-
known “skull and roses” design that first appeared on a 1966 concert poster,
the band developed its own line of themed merchandise, which was highly
profitable for the band. The second is that as the concert industry expanded in
the 1990s, becoming ever more profitable, the close relationship that Grateful
Dead fans felt for the band manifested itself in record-breaking concert re-
ceipts for the group’s tours. Although the band only toured for six years up
until Garcia’s death during the 1990s, they were the second largest concert
144 • GREATEST HITS ALBUM
earner with $285 million in ticket sales according to Billboard, behind only
the Rolling Stones for that decade. More than any other U.S. rock group, the
Grateful Dead proved that by building and sustaining a strong and lasting
relationship with a core fan base, a group may have multigenerational finan-
cial success and security without necessarily having chart-topping sales.
GREY ALBUM, THE. The Grey Album was an experimental art project by
musician and producer Danger Mouse. The album was released in 2004 and
mixed a cappella tracks from Jay-Z’s 2003 The Black Album with the Beat-
les’ so-called 1968 White Album. The album received rave reviews, enjoyed
a wide internet distribution, and put a spotlight on the practice of remixing
and sampling.
EMI Records, the copyright holder for the Beatles’ master recordings,
attempted to halt dissemination of the record by ordering retailers and Dan-
ger Mouse to cease distribution. In response, a Grey Tuesday event was
organized where participating websites posted copies of the album as a free
download. The event organizers argued that the album was an example of
fair use. Jay-Z and the surviving members of the Beatles made statements in
support of the album.
HARRY FOX AGENCY (HFA). The Harry Fox Agency was founded in
1927 by the Music Publishers’ Protective Association (later the National
Music Publishers’ Association). HFA licenses, collects, and distributes roy-
alties on behalf of music copyright owners, including an estimated 30,000
publishers. HFA grants mechanical rights that allow the licensee to transmit
recorded music in public spaces as well as reproduce and distribute copy-
righted musical works for a variety of products, such as compact discs,
digital downloads, commercials, and ringtones. The synchronization rights
division closed in 2002. At the time of this writing, the Harry Fox Agency
retains a commission of 11.5 percent of the licensing proceeds for their
services. The agency provides a cost-effective alternative to each publisher
having in-house staff to administer and grant licenses. It has developed an
online licensing portal, SongFile, which allows a fully automated licensing
process for the vast majority of the songs it represents. The Harry Fox Agen-
cy was purchased by SESAC in 2015 from the National Music Publishers’
Association for an estimated $20 million.
147
148 • HENDRIX, JIMI (1942–1970)
The family struggled with finding stable housing, and Hendrix’s three
youngest siblings were placed in foster care due to the family’s inability to
care for them.
After getting his first guitar in 1958, he practiced constantly and was soon
in and out of a number of local bands. By 1959, he had graduated to his first
electric guitar and was playing in a professional band, the Rocking Kings.
The 18-year-old guitarist was arrested as a passenger in stolen cars, so he was
forced to enlist in the U.S. Army in May 1961 rather than serve time in jail.
However, the discipline required in the army proved problematic for the
nonconformist musician, and a little more than a year later he received an
honorable discharge as he was deemed unsuitable for military service.
From 1963 to 1965, Hendrix was a journeyman guitarist working in Nash-
ville and New York City and playing as a backup musician in the studio and
on tour with Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Sam Cooke, Curtis Knight,
and Wilson Pickett. By June 1966, he felt limited in his role as a sideman
and moved back to New York City’s Greenwich Village and formed Jimmie
James and the Blue Flames, where he would start to develop his unique
approach to playing and performance that would soon capture the public’s
imagination.
Hendrix went to London in September 1966 at the request of Chas Chan-
dler, a former member of popular British Invasion group the Animals, who
had begun to manage artists. Chandler and his partner, manager Michael
Jeffrey, soon brought on a drummer, Mitch Mitchell, and bassist Noel Red-
ding to complement Hendrix in the newly formed Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The group recorded three singles, each of which made the UK top 10, before
embarking on recording the rest of the songs needed for the group’s first
album, Are You Experienced, which would go on to top-five success in the
U.S. and UK, announcing a bold new artistic voice in the rock music world.
Hendrix often used a lazy, whimsical vocal delivery that appealed to the
teens of the era, but his blistering and inventive guitar playing, especially his
use of amplifier feedback, the guitar’s tremolo (whammy bar) to radically
alter the pitch of notes, and his reliance of then-new guitar effects, such as
the wah-wah pedal and distortion box, made his music at once fresh and
antiestablishment when compared to the standard pop fare of the day. The
guitar parts on the songs “Purple Haze,” “Foxy Lady,” and “Fire” were
imitated by tens of thousands of aspiring guitarists, who each tried to match
Hendrix’s timing, intonation, and expressive note bends.
In the summer of 1967, Hendrix and his group were booked for the Mon-
terey International Pop Festival, which would prove to be the catapult he
needed to achieve superstar status. During his set, Hendrix performed with
his usual panache and guitar artistry, which included playing his guitar be-
hind his back and with his teeth. However, it was his set-closing decision to
place his feedback-generating guitar onstage and light it on fire that galva-
HENDRIX, JIMI (1942–1970) • 149
nized the thousands of fans in attendance. Captured on film and photo-
graphed, kneeling before his guitar and summoning flames became an iconic
image that made him a household name. When the Monterey Pop documen-
tary film debuted the following year, his performance in the movie helped
him to gain an even larger audience.
The group would go on to release two more albums during their tenure,
both in 1968. Axis Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, a double album,
provided Hendrix with a much broader musical canvas than his first studio
album. On Axis, Hendrix began to experiment with carefully created stereo
panning effects, to create the illusion that his guitar was flying back and forth
around the listener, as well as experimenting with a newly developed process
called phasing, which produced an ethereal swooshing sound that other art-
ists soon emulated.
Hendrix had developed enough confidence in his production abilities that
he spent more than six months in the studio creating the follow-up, Electric
Ladyland, and involved a number of other musicians to realize his vision.
The double album clocked in at more than 75 minutes, twice the convention-
al album length, all of it original in its sound, with the majority of the tracks
charting new territory for popular music. Ranging from a memorable cover
of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” which became another top 40
hit for Hendrix, through the 15-minute slow blues jam “Voodoo Chile,” to
the futuristic, otherworldly 13-minute sonic collage represented by “1983 (A
Merman I Shall Turn to Be),” Hendrix’s final album with the Experience
showed the full range of his musical influences, including jazz, blues, pop,
electronic music, and soul. It reached the top of the charts and would go on to
sell more than two million copies in the United States. While it was em-
braced by the listening public, critics offered tepid reviews, most of which
decried what they perceived as excessive experimentation and overly lengthy
jams. Chandler and Hendrix also dissolved their working relationship as
Chandler felt Hendrix was no longer following his advice. Jeffrey continued
in his role as sole manager for Hendrix.
The next milestone of Hendrix’s career was his performance at the 1969
Woodstock Festival as the final act of the three-day festival attended by
more than 400,000 concertgoers. Originally scheduled to go on at midnight
Saturday, Hendrix instead opted to perform on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. to a
much smaller audience. Similar to his performance at Monterey, it was docu-
mented on film while he performed “The Star Spangled Banner” as a solo
electric guitar piece, simulating the bombs, rockets, and bullets described in
the song with his guitar pyrotechnics. His filmed performance has been rec-
ognized by fans and critics alike as one of the most iconic moments of the
1960s.
150 • HIP HOP
The original Jimi Hendrix Experience, however, had broken up in mid-
1969, and Hendrix then performed with various lineups of support musicians.
In the fall of 1969, post-Woodstock, Hendrix formed a new trio with his
longtime friend Billy Cox on bass and seasoned drummer Buddy Miles.
Dubbed the Band of Gypsys, the group recorded a well-received eponymous
live album on the nights of 31 December 1969–1 January 1970 at Bill Gra-
ham’s Fillmore East Ballroom. The album, released in April 1970, featured
another bravura genre-bending guitar explosion from Hendrix on the track
“Machine Gun,” which provided commentary not only on the increasingly
unpopular Vietnam War but also the civil rights struggles going on in Ameri-
ca’s cities.
Jimi Hendrix by this time was frequently using drugs and alcohol, which
sometimes led to him acting aggressively or becoming uncharacteristically
withdrawn. After dissolving the Band of Gypsys shortly after the recording
of their live album, Hendrix and his manager Michael Jeffrey formed the Cry
of Love band with Billy Cox and original drummer Mitch Mitchell to contin-
ue performing in the United States and overseas. At some of the group’s 32
U.S. performances, Hendrix was impaired by the drugs he had taken before
the concerts, and as a result the band’s sets were uneven.
Based on the then seemingly extraordinary studio time and attendant costs
required to create his third studio album, Hendrix and manager Michael
Jeffrey decided to build a custom recording studio in New York City to
afford a creative home for the artist and to control recording costs on future
projects. The Greenwich Village studio was named for his third studio al-
bum, Electric Ladyland, and opened in June 1970 with a jam session featur-
ing Hendrix and members of the band Traffic. Hendrix would only record
one song there, “Night Bird Flying.” The studio, which reportedly cost one
million dollars to design and build, opened its doors to outside clients after an
opening party on 26 August 1970. It is regarded as a premiere recording
facility today and continues to operate under its original name.
With management pressing to continue the Cry of Love Tour in Europe,
Hendrix returned to London and headlined the prestigious Isle of Wight
Festival. However, he continued to suffer ill effects from drug use, and the
band gave a lackluster performance in Denmark that was canceled after only
three songs. Then an appearance at a German festival was canceled due to
risks of playing outdoors in the rain. Hendrix returned to London and stayed
with friends, and on 18 September 1970, Hendrix died as a consequence of
taking an overdose of sleeping pills provided by a friend.
HIP HOP. The collective term “hip hop” may be applied in reference to any
modern urban art form but is most commonly used historically to describe
the artistic output of MCs or rappers, DJs or turntablists, break-dancers
(also referred to as b-boys and b-girls), and graffiti artists. These are some-
HOLLY, BUDDY (1936–1959) • 151
times referred to as the original “elements” of what became hip hop. Founda-
tions of hip hop culture can be traced back to the severe economic, social,
safety, and housing hardships faced by ethnic minorities in big cities across
America, but most particularly in the South Bronx area of New York City,
where gangs ruled the streets. In answer to the desperate times, young people
in the Bronx turned to self-made art to find a way to express themselves and
share their joys, fears, and frustrations with each another.
Cultural gatherings as early as 1974, championed by one of the first well-
known DJs, Afrika Bambaataa, combined all of the elements, including mu-
sic, dance, and graffiti made by a range of participants to create a peaceful
experience, under an umbrella organization Bambaataa dubbed the Zulu Na-
tion, although all ethnicities were welcomed. The music industry first took
note of what was happening when a small independent record label with
scant connection to the street-level hip hop scene had a hit in 1979 with the
Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” The song used the term “hip hop”
repeatedly in the lyrics, and the term itself was soon appropriated to primari-
ly mean the overlay of a rapper or MC over a repetitive music track. And
while the three MCs hired to perform as the Sugar Hill Gang had little street
credibility, the listening audience heard an exciting new music style that
caught the public’s imagination.
Once the major record labels saw the potential in developing a market for
the new music, what started as an authentic do-it-yourself-based form of art
became part of the music industry’s repeating pattern of appropriating fresh,
original new music to commoditize it for financial gain. By the mid-1980s,
hip hop primarily meant rappers performing on MTV, releasing hit records,
and performing in concert. The other essential three elements—graffiti art,
break dancing, and DJs—had only limited commercial acceptance, outside of
many hip hop groups incorporating a DJ and a short run of Hollywood films
that prominently featured break dancing in the mid-1980s. As hip hop built a
global audience, multinational entertainment corporations enlisted the help
of the music’s most visible stars to launch fashion, beverage, fragrance,
automobile, jewelry, and other lifestyle product categories that became very
successful.
155
156 • INDIES
label imprint to produce and release his or her own music and perhaps that of
the artist’s protégés. Eminem’s Slim Shady Records is an example of a
major-affiliated indie label.
INSERTS. Any type of additional printed media included inside the retail
package of a physical record. In the era of the long-playing record, this
might have included a two-sided sheet of lyrics and artist photos, or a mail
order form from the record label for other titles in their catalog. If the artist
requests that a special insert be included, the record label will charge the
artist for the added expense.
IPOD. Apple Computer launched its first portable music player, the iPod,
in October 2001, a few months after debuting its iTunes music software.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs adopted a visionary zeal to embrace music as a
key part of individual’s lives and saw the combination of the iPod music
player, iTunes software, and the soon to be launched iTunes music store as
game changing for both Apple and the music industry. While initial reaction
was lukewarm due to the comparatively high price of Apple’s MP3 player,
the debut of the iTunes music store and the Windows version of iTunes
created a buzz that led to the iPod’s 2004 rise as the most coveted portable
music player among the public. By July 2005, the iPod reportedly had
achieved 74 percent of the U.S. market share for portable music players. By
2007, Apple reported selling 100 million iPods, making it the best-selling
music player in history. Its cachet as the music player of choice has contin-
ued, and in 2012 Apple reported worldwide sales in excess of 350 million
iPods. Apple has wisely diversified its product offerings under the iPod label,
with some priced as low as $79. Today, although the mobile phone is serving
as a media player for many consumers, the iPod continues to be offered by
Apple, while vintage models, some of which boast storage capacity of up to
160 gigabytes, are prized by collectors.
158 • ITUNES MUSIC STORE
ITUNES MUSIC STORE. iTunes began life as a computer-based music
library and player software program released by Apple Computer in January
2001, in large part as an answer to the music industry’s inability to respond to
the rapid spread of unauthorized distribution of popular music via the MP3
file format, peer-to-peer file sharing, and the internet. The companion
iTunes music store, launched in 2003, provided the first consumer-friendly
option for legally acquiring digital downloads and rapidly became the
biggest retailer of music in the world, selling one million tracks in its first
week of operation and 50 million by the end of its first year.
Initially, songs purchased via the iTunes music store had digital rights
management (DRM) embedded in the file at the insistence of the major
labels, which limited the consumer’s ability to copy or share the file. In
2009, Apple removed all DRM limits on songs purchased through the iTunes
music store. Today’s iTunes has grown into the world’s leading comprehen-
sive media ecosystem providing access, organization, and programming op-
tions for consumers to enjoy music, movies, podcasts, audio books, and a
growing range of media and entertainment options.
See also IPOD.
J
JACKSON, MICHAEL (1958–2009). Michael Jackson was born on 29
August 1958 and is widely referred to as the “King of Pop” due to his
dominance on the pop music charts in the late 1970s and 1980s. Jackson was
an iconic pop singer, dancer, producer, and songwriter who rivaled the
Beatles as a globally recognized superstar. Born in Gary, Indiana, he started
singing professionally at the age of six and first achieved fame as the 11-
year-old lead singer of the Jackson Five. The group, which consisted of him
and his brothers, rose to fame in the 1970s while recording for the Motown
label. Some of the Jackson Five top 40 hits include “I Want You Back,”
“ABC,” and “I’ll Be There.”
Jackson’s solo career flourished in the late 1970s. He collaborated with
Quincy Jones on the 1979 album Off the Wall. The two worked together to
update Jackson’s sound and image so that he would appeal to mainstream
audiences with a blend of funk, pop, and disco. Jackson’s own vocal style
had matured significantly from his early success with his brothers, and he
displayed his well-known melodic inventiveness and rhythmic drive, which
helped propel Off the Wall to chart four top 10 singles from the album and go
on to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide.
For many artists, that level of success could be career-defining; however,
Jackson and Jones’s next collaboration, Thriller, released in 1982, raised the
bar even further. It became an international hit, breaking sales records in
nearly every territory it was available. Songs such as “Beat It,” “The Girl Is
Mine,” and “Billie Jean” successfully transcended genres, including soul,
heavy metal/hard rock, and disco. The music videos for the songs on Jack-
son’s Thriller album also became very popular, in large part because he and
his record label invested heavily in high-quality music videos at the start of
the MTV era, featuring Jackson’s telegenic presence with an immediacy that
radio and records could not rival. The 14-minute-long music video for the
song “Thriller” is regarded today as having established a then new standard
for music videos, in part due to its then-staggering one-million-dollar pro-
duction budget.
159
160 • JACKSON, MICHAEL (1958–2009)
Jackson’s videos posed a problem for the nascent MTV network in that
black artists were seldom featured. MTV believed that Jackson’s music
would not appeal to their target audience, which was mainly white males.
The crunching guitars on “Beat It” helped persuade MTV to air Jackson’s
videos, and they soon became some of the most requested programming in
the network’s short history. Thriller was unprecedented in its success, even-
tually selling 65 million copies worldwide. Its success caused a paradigm
shift in music industry thinking to what became referred to as the “superstar
model,” where a label’s marketing assets would be concentrated very nar-
rowly on a select artist or two in order to maximize sales and profits, rather
than investing a modest amount in dozens of artists hoping for one to pay off.
Jackson also used his success to leverage a variety of lucrative business
deals. By the time Thriller was released, he had reportedly bargained to
receive nearly two dollars per album in artist royalties, double the normal
rate for chart-topping artists. In 1984, Jackson signed a $5 million contract
with Pepsi for television commercials, while also arranging profitable
endorsements with a wide range of other firms. By 1985, with income flow-
ing in at a record pace, Jackson purchased the publishing group ATV Music,
which included the rights to tens of thousands of hit songs, most notably the
Lennon–McCartney catalog written for the Beatles.
Jackson partnered with Lionel Richie on the 1985 all-star collaboration
“We Are the World.” The song was released both as a single and as part of an
album titled USA for Africa and helped raise $63 million for famine relief in
African nations.
The albums Bad (1987) and Dangerous (1991) were extremely successful
commercially, each logging global sales in excess of 20 million units, but
Jackson could not attain the same success as Thriller. Some of Jackson’s
critics believed he was simply repeating himself in term of sound and
themes; nevertheless, due to his megastar status, the albums were very profit-
able.
Jackson’s personal issues became the center of the public’s attention in the
1990s. He was charged in a civil suit of sexual abuse in 1991, which settled
out of court in 1994. Reception to his next two albums, HIStory in 1995 and
Invincible in 2001, were disappointing and mixed, although both still resulted
in multi-Platinum sales. Jackson was again charged with sexual abuse in
2004 and was acquitted on all charged in 2005. The nonstop global media
coverage of the case was intense and overwhelming. As a result, the preter-
naturally shy Jackson retreated even further into seclusion.
Jackson and his team of advisors hatched a comeback plan for a world tour
that would be kicked off with a 50-show residency at London’s O2 Arena,
but while he was in the midst of rehearsals, Jackson died on 25 June 2009
from a prescription drug overdose, leading to a protracted legal battle over
his substantial estate. Since a great deal of Jackson’s sales totals came in the
JAY-Z • 161
pre-SoundScan era, opinions differ on how many records he actually sold.
According to publicly available information, he sold more than 184 million
records globally. However, other sources cite Michael Jackson’s estimated
global sales at 350 million albums. Nevertheless, he won 13 Grammy
Awards and left behind a rich catalog of iconic recordings and videos and
fostered widespread humanitarian efforts help to ensure his legacy as one of
the most successful entertainers in music history.
JAY-Z. Jay-Z, born Shawn Corey Carter on 4 December 1969, is a hip hop
artist, producer, and entrepreneur. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and
was raised in the poverty-riddled housing projects. As an adolescent, he was
fatherless and sold crack cocaine on the streets, experiences that he later used
as material in his rap songs.
In 1996, he founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Damon Dash and Kareem
Burke. He released his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, in 1996. The album
has come to be known as one of his cornerstones of the rap genre, reaching
number 23 on the charts. Jay-Z’s fame slowly grew as he collaborated with
established artists, such as Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and Nas.
He followed up his first album with In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 in 1997, which
was a fusion of gansta rap and pop, rising to number three on the charts. In
1998, Jay-Z released Vol 2 . . . Hard Knock Life, which contained hits
including “Can I Get A” and “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” which
sampled the same song from the musical Annie. The album won a Grammy
for Best Rap Album and went on to achieve five-times Platinum status.
Vol 3: Life and Times of S. Carter was released in 1999 and featured well-
known hits “Big Pimpin’” and “Do It Again (Put Ya Hands Up).” That same
year he launched the Rocawear clothing line, which reached sales of $700
million in 2007.
After releasing several more albums, including Dynasty Roc la Familia
(2000), The Blueprint (2001), Unplugged (2001), The Best of Both Worlds
(2002), The Blueprint2: The Gift & the Curse (2002), and The Black Album
(2003), Jay-Z announced his retirement. He became the president of Def Jam
Records with the mission of providing direction to the struggling label.
Under Jay-Z’s leadership, Def Jam found success with new artists like Ri-
hanna and Young Jeezy.
Jay-Z has been the focus of several controversies, including the stabbing
of a record producer in 2001, which led to a sentence of three years’
probation, as well as public feuds with prominent rappers such as Prodigy
and Nas.
He came out of retirement in 2005 for the “I Declare War” concert in New
York City and went on to release Kingdom Come (2006) and American
Gangster (2007). He left Def Jam in 2009 so that he could establish Roc
Nation, a talent agency, label, and music publisher. He has diversified his
162 • J-CARD
holdings to include nightclubs, a sports agency, stakes in beverage compa-
nies, and many other business initiatives. In 2008, he wed recording artist
Beyoncé, and in 2015 he led the acquisition of music streaming service
Tidal. Since his so-called 2005 retirement, all four of his studio albums have
attained Platinum sales levels.
Through his prolific artistic output and strong business acumen, Jay-Z has
solidified his position as one of the top male rappers and entrepreneurs of all
time, selling in excess of 100 million albums and winning 21 Grammy
Awards.
J-CARD. In the era of the compact music cassette, the normal album art-
work was adapted to fit onto a small printed cover, which would be inserted
into a plastic case that was then shrink-wrapped and ready for retail sale. Due
to the cover’s dimensions, when viewed from the side it resembled the letter
J.
JINGLES. A term used to describe music composed and performed for the
benefit of a company advertising a product or service to consumers. The
composition often contains lyrics that may mention the product name, a
perceived benefit, or another slogan. Jingles often conform to the standard
length of radio or television advertisements, for example, 30 or 60 seconds in
duration. Composers who specialize in this area of music are often termed
jingle writers, and music firms that become well known for such work may
be referred to as jingle houses. Prior to the advent of cable television, popular
jingles became as ubiquitous as the most successful hit songs due to their
heavy rotation on prime-time television and radio broadcasts.
JOINT RECORDING. A sound recording that features more than one es-
tablished artist in an equal or costarring role. Most often, this takes the form
of a duet, but larger ensembles may be made up for the purpose of joint
recordings, an example being the 1990s phenomenon of the Three Tenors.
In most cases, the artists on the joint recording will share billing and royalties
equally.
JONES, QUINCY. Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born on 14 March 1933 in
Chicago and is an African American producer, entrepreneur, musician, and
philanthropist widely known for producing Michael Jackson’s best-selling
albums. Jones relocated to the Seattle area with his family at the age of 10.
There he developed his musical abilities, playing trumpet in a number of
musical groups. After attending some college, he joined Lionel Hampton’s
band and toured Europe at the age of 19. By the 1960s, Jones was an in-
demand arranger, composer, and bandleader, breaking into film music for
JOPLIN, SCOTT (1867/68–1917) • 163
the 1964 film The Pawnbroker, the first of 33 motion pictures he would
score. He continued to write and release his own music while also serving as
an executive for Mercury Records.
In 1975, Jones founded Qwest Productions, one of a number of media and
entertainment companies he would found and guide to exceptional success in
music, television, Broadway musicals, and motion pictures. He famously
brought together dozens of A-list performers to raise money and awareness
to the plight of Ethiopians via the 1985 charity project “We Are the World.”
It was Jones who helped define the 1980s pop music milieu with his work
producing Michael Jackson’s albums Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982),
and Bad (1987), each of which went on to sell millions of copies and influ-
ence untold numbers of musicians around the world. He is also an outspoken
advocate for civil rights and helping underprivileged youth. He has been
recognized by his peers with an unprecedented 79 Grammy Award nomina-
tions, winning a Grammy 27 times during his storied career.
167
168 • KEYBOARD STORE
Kesha’s songwriting credits include compositions cowritten for artists
such as Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, and Iggy Azalea. Her
single “Tik Tok” has sold more than 15 million copies, and overall she has
sold an estimated 76 million records (albums and singles) worldwide.
KING, CAROLE. Carole King, born Carol Joan Klein on 9 February 1942,
in Brooklyn, New York, is a songwriter, performer, and recording artist best
known for her 1971 album Tapestry, which would go on after its release to
sell more than 25 million copies. She started learning piano from her mother
at the age of three. She excelled at music and school and by high school was
making demonstration recordings for $25 a session, sometimes pairing
with her friend Paul Simon. However, her songwriting was a part-time avo-
cation as she studied at nearby Queens College, where she met fellow song-
writer Gerry Goffin, who was studying chemistry. They married in 1959 and
both quit school and took day jobs, continuing to write in their spare time.
One of their songs, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” was recorded by
the Shirelles and went to number one on the Billboard charts in 1961,
allowing them to focus full-time on songwriting.
As members of the talented young group of songwriters in New York
City’s Brill Building, through the 1960s King and Goffin wrote more than
two dozen hit songs for a variety of artists, including Aretha Franklin, the
KLEIN, ALLEN (1931–2009) • 169
Drifters, the Monkees, and Herman’s Hermits. By 1968, the couple had
divorced and King moved to Los Angeles, where she continued to write and
perform, leading up to her breakthrough album as an artist, Tapestry. In total,
King has written 118 top 100 songs for various artists throughout her career
and won four Grammys and numerous other accolades, including becoming
the first woman ever to win the nation’s highest songwriting honor, the
Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, in 2013.
LADY GAGA. Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in
New York City on 28 March 1986 and is considered one of the first millenni-
al superstars. She attended school at New York University’s Tisch School
for the Arts. She withdrew from school after two years to pursue a career in
performance. She is best known as a singer, songwriter, performance artist,
and actress who has made her reputation by presenting unconventional and
provocative art and visual images to her audience.
After honing her songwriting and vocal skills performing in coffee houses
and clubs around New York, she was signed to a record deal with Def Jam
Recordings but was then dropped. She secured a staff songwriting position
at a music publisher and kept building her contacts. She eventually came to
the attention of the artist Akon, who helped her sign a new deal with Inter-
scope Records in 2007. Gaga released her debut album in 2008, titled The
Fame, which sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Some of the songs
on The Fame were hits, including “Just Dance,” “Paparazzi,” and “Poker
Face.” In 2009, she released an EP, The Fame Monster, which was a deluxe
addition to her debut album featuring hits like “Bad Romance” and a well-
received duet with Beyoncé, “Telephone.” Combined sales of the album and
EP topped 15 million worldwide.
173
174 • LAMAR, KENDRICK
Lady Gaga released her second album, Born This Way, in 2011. The album
achieved double Platinum status despite mixed reviews. The title track,
“Born This Way,” became an empowerment anthem and was embraced by
those seeking marriage equality for LGBTQ persons. Her third album, Art-
pop, was released in 2013, debuting at number one. The following year, she
showed her range by releasing an album of jazz standards performed as duets
with legendary singer Tony Bennett titled Cheek to Cheek; it debuted at the
top of the charts and helped Gaga cross over to a new audience. In 2016, she
released Joanne, continuing her streak of album debuts at the number one
position.
Lady Gaga’s style is theatrical, extravagant, and glamorous. She is known
for her outrageous and elaborate costumes, frequent set and wardrobe
changes during her concerts, and for creating a media firestorm with her
creative ideas, such as the infamous dress made of raw beef that she wore at
the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Her music videos and live perfor-
mances are spectacles that present creative art form as mainstream entertain-
ment. She calls her devoted group of fans “Little Monsters”; however, the
size and intensity of her fans’ devotion to her is singular in today’s pop music
milieu, with a proportionally higher ratio of super fans than any other pop
star. More than any other contemporary artist, Gaga inspires fan engage-
ment at a level that helps make every new recording, tour date, and public
announcement a major media event.
Importantly, Gaga has used her celebrity throughout her career to cham-
pion causes ranging from the aforementioned LGBTQ rights to disaster relief
around the world. In 2012, she founded the Born This Way Foundation to
address issues of youth empowerment, antibullying, and self-esteem. She has
won numerous awards, including six Grammy Awards, as well as a Golden
Globe for her acting in the series American Horror Story and numerous
fashion awards. While her worldwide album sales of 27 million units are
impressive, she is best known as a singles artist, having sold an estimated
146 million singles worldwide as of 2016. In 2017, the Recording Industry
Association of America certified that Gaga is one of the top-selling digital
artists, having sold more than 60 million digital downloads or streaming
equivalents.
LIGHT, ROB. Rob Light is an agent specializing in live music concerts and
heads the Music Department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which in
2015 was responsible for booking artists that earned $3.4 billion in concert
sales. He attended Syracuse University, where he was in charge of staging
campus concerts before earning a degree in film and television. He began his
career in the entertainment industry in the mail room at International Crea-
tive Management in 1978, becoming an agent one year later. Light moved to
CAA in 1984. Two of his most notable contributions to the field include
expansion of full-service offices overseas both to develop new relationships
and to take care of U.S.-based artists during international touring, and the
development of the so-called integrated services model, whereby his team
develops new opportunities for endorsements, film placements, licensing,
acting, apparel, fragrance, beauty products, and other ancillary fields.
LILITH FAIR. Lilith Fair was a tour founded by Sarah McLachlan in 1997
as a way to highlight talented female musicians and female-led bands. The
tour continued until 1999 and featured headliners, up-and-coming perform-
ers, and local musicians. Some of the performers who toured with Lilith Fair
were Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Indigo
Girls, Erkyah Badu, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, Dixie Chicks, Christina
LIND, JENNY (1820–1887) • 179
Aguilera, Nelly Furtado, and Queen Latifah. It was an opportunity for female
artists from different genres to come together and raise awareness of wom-
en’s issues.
In 1997, Lilith Fair earned $16 million and was the top-grossing festival
tour of the year. The tour also donated money to women’s charities through-
out Canada and the United States. The festival was revived in 2010 with
mixed reviews.
LIND, JENNY (1820–1887). Jenny Lind was a Swedish singer who capti-
vated the American listening public with her yearlong American tour, which
was orchestrated by master promoter P. T. Barnum. Barnum was a master
salesman and impresario who managed to read the public like few others
before or after him. He was so confident in his ability to create a near frenzy
of interest for the singer, whom he dubbed the “Swedish Nightingale,” when
she arrived in America, Barnum prepaid the then-extraordinary concert fees
of $187,000, which Lind may have demanded to discourage such an ex-
tended foreign tour.
Barnum recognized her outstanding vocal ability and charismatic person-
ality and combined those with his unique and effective promotion tech-
niques, which included newspapers, posters, and word of mouth. By drawing
the public’s attention to her upstanding Christian character with the prestige
of operatic singing, a relatively new musical style to the American audience,
he built up enough interest so that when her steamship docked in New York
Harbor on 1 September 1850, she was greeted by 30,000 admirers. Much like
the frenzy that would arise in the next century for Frank Sinatra, Elvis
Presley, and the Beatles, everywhere Lind made an appearance would turn
into a mob scene filled with thousands of fans straining to get a look at her.
Furthermore, to raise interest in her future concerts, Barnum would ar-
range a public auction of the first two tickets that could be purchased in each
city, with a reported $625 paid for the two tickets to her Boston concert.
These and other astounding sums paid at auction made further news head-
lines in advance of each of her appearances and fueled the ticket-buying
demand at each stop of her tour.
Lind clearly profited from her American tour, which was attended by
thousands, but Barnum made even more. As a precursor to the modern music
industry and its reliance on Jenny Lind–themed merchandise to provide
substantial revenue, Barnum sold not only concert tickets but also sheet
music, pianos, gloves, and even stoves. Barnum’s profits from the Jenny
Lind tour were estimated to be in excess of $500,000.
180 • LINER NOTES
LINER NOTES. Liner notes refer to the credits for anyone who contributed
in any way to the making of a commercial recording. It is normally the task
of the record producer to document and compile the liner notes, ensuring
that no one is left out and that everything is accurate. More recently, artists
often include thank-you lists as part of the liner notes, as well as any refer-
ences to endorsement deals they may have in effect.
LIVE AID. The Live Aid charity concert was held on 13 July 1985 in
London at Wembley Stadium and a few hours later continued at JFK Sta-
dium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Live Aid was one of the highest profile
among a host of sociopolitical efforts to mobilize music fans to effect social
change held during the 1980s.
The effort was organized by Bob Geldof, an Irish musician who had be-
come aware of the horrendous famine and starvation that was then devastat-
ing Ethiopia and other African nations after making a trip to see the horrific
effects caused by the famine. Combined, the two concerts ran back-to-back
for 16 hours, and with the help of then-new satellite broadcast technology,
the performances were beamed out simultaneously to 110 countries.
The concert was put together in only 10 weeks, and the roster of perform-
ers spanned genres and styles, from U2 to the Beach Boys, Madonna, the
Who, Run-DMC, Santana, Queen, David Bowie, and Sting; 70,000 attended
the London concert and 100,000 in Philadelphia, while an estimated audience
of 1.5 billion viewed it globally. Forty countries set up telephone call centers
to help raise funds locally, resulting in a total of $127 million raised to be
used for famine relief in the affected region. Furthermore, the publicity sur-
rounding the event encouraged prosperous Western nations to donate surplus
grain immediately to stem the famine.
In 2005, Geldof once again organized a series of 11 celebrity concerts
around the world, this time with the aim of debt relief for the world’s poorest
countries. Dubbed Live 8, it featured more than 1,000 performers and was
seen or heard on radio and television by an estimated audience of three
billion. Importantly, rather than a direct plea for financial support, Geldof
and his backers asked the audience to make their voice heard to politicians
and financiers to give debt relief to the poorest nations. Soon after, the
LOLLAPALOOZA • 181
decision was made by the so-called G8 nations to cancel the debt of 18 of the
world’s poorest nations and to provide more and better access to AIDS
medication and to increase the level of foreign aid to African nations in the
ensuing years.
185
186 • MAGNETIC TAPE
In addition to her role as a co-owner of Maverick, Madonna continued to
push boundaries with her 1992 book Sex and by continuing to address issues
of sexuality, gender, and identity through her music, videos, costumes, and
outspoken opinions. Songs such as “Papa, Don’t Preach” addressed teen
pregnancy, while “Like a Prayer” dealt with interracial relationships. Stylisti-
cally, Madonna has always been able to adapt to the shifting tastes in popular
music, in part by finding new collaborators to help her stay abreast of the
public’s changing preferences. While the frequency of her album releases
and tours have tapered somewhat, the touring aspect of her career has re-
mained near the top of the list of highest-grossing tours around the world. In
2007, she entered into a 10-year, $120 million deal with Live Nation to
support her tours, fund three albums, and share proceeds from licensing and
name rights. The Sticky & Sweet Tour in 2008 reported $408 million in
ticket sales, at that time one of the highest-grossing tours ever. At the conclu-
sion of her 2015 Rebel Heart Tour, her combined tour earnings from
1990–2015 topped $1.31 billion, making her the most successful solo touring
artist according to Billboard magazine.
Madonna’s uncanny ability to reinvent herself musically over her lengthy
career, while continuing to remain relevant with fans of varying ages and
backgrounds, has led to her continued success, especially as a bankable are-
na-level live performer. Madonna continues to be a fashion, style, and musi-
cal leader well into her fourth decade in the music industry. Her sales of more
than 170 million records worldwide places her among the most successful
artists of any era.
MC. A term used commonly in rap music to denote a performer who vo-
calizes rhymes over the music provided by a DJ. Historically, the term has
been used somewhat interchangeably with the alternatives “emcee” and “rap-
per.”
MERCHANDISE • 189
MECHANICAL LICENSE. This license is given for the right to incorpo-
rate any song that is copyright protected into a phonorecord that is made
and distributed to the public. The term originated immediately after the
Copyright Act of 1909 and was used to refer to the license publishers were
now able to require for their songs to be mechanically reproduced on the then
popular piano rolls. Any audio-only means of reproducing a song requires
that a mechanical license be secured before the new phonorecord can be
distributed.
See also COMPULSORY MECHANICAL LICENSE; DIRECT LI-
CENSE; MECHANICAL ROYALTIES.
MUSIC STREAMING. Services that allow the listener some control over
the selection of music they will hear are referred to as interactive radio or
music sites. This includes internet-only radio services such as Spotify and
Pandora, which each offer a free level of access with advertisements inter-
spersed between songs. Still, these sites afford some level of control to the
listener as they may choose to skip a limited number of songs per day. Each
service also offers a premium subscription version, which allows more con-
trol and eliminates advertisements. In April 2016, Digital Music News esti-
mated that the worldwide total for consumers paying for a premium music
subscription service was nearly 90 million users, while the Recording In-
dustry Association of America cited rapid growth in paid subscriptions to
music streaming services as one of the bright spots in the changing landscape
of the current music industry.
See also FREEMIUM; STREAMING RADIO.
MYSPACE. Myspace.com was an early social media site that offered users a
free, easy-to-navigate platform to share music, photos, profiles, and other
types of information with their network of contacts. Founded in 2003 as an
in-house project at eUniverse by CEO Bud Greenspan, it was inspired by the
then popular platform Friendster. Importantly, it was decided to keep the
platform free of any charges for users, with the company earning revenue
through ad placements as well as the user profile data it could gather and
market to third parties.
Due to its rapid growth, the company was sold to NewsCorp in 2005 for a
sum of $580 million. At its peak in 2008, an estimated 76 million users made
the site the go-to destination to share and discover new music online; howev-
er, it was soon eclipsed by Facebook as the internet’s most popular social
media site. This led to Myspace’s decline as the leading music-sharing site. It
remains a part of the online music space today, with more than 50 million
users and approximately 13,000 songs still being uploaded each day to its
206 • MYSPACE
catalog of more than 50 million songs. However, according to Myspace, of
its roster of 14.2 million artists with accounts, 14 million are unsigned bands
with less than 1 percent, or 133,000 artists, having secured record deals.
N
NAPSTER. Napster was a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing service in-
tended primarily for music encoded as MP3s founded in 1999 by Sean Park-
er and Shawn Fanning. Prior to Napster, consumers had to purchase music
as a physical copy; however, with Napster, users were able to download any
song they wanted for free so long as it resided on any other Napster subscrib-
er’s hard drive. At its peak, Napster boasted 60 million users worldwide.
While a number of high-profile artists were happy with the new life and
enthusiasm Napster was breathing into the music industry (most notably
Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Chuck D of Public Enemy), others, especial-
ly record labels and publishers, were upset that people now had access to
their music without paying for it. In December 1999, the Recording Indus-
try Association of America filed suit against Napster for infringement as
millions of unauthorized downloads were being facilitated daily by Napster’s
peer-to-peer software. Drummer Lars Ulrich of Metallica was very outspok-
en against Napster, and in 2000 the band filed its own suit. The court found
in favor of the RIAA, and as a result Napster lost its right to host copy-
righted music, prompting it to shut down in July 2001; in 2002, after a failed
effort by BMG to purchase Napster, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Since 2002, Napster has been bought and sold by a number of different
companies; however, none were able to reignite the spark from the compa-
ny’s earliest days and make Napster relevant to new users. In 2016, Rhapso-
dy, one of the first paid subscription music services, bought Napster in hopes
that adopting its high-profile name would help Rhapsody compete with more
popular streaming services, such as Spotify and Pandora.
207
208 • NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MUSIC MERCHANDISERS (NAMM)
mercial radio was getting its start in the United States. Throughout the 1920s,
the NAB worked closely with the government to establish the commercial
radio industry, with an emphasis on what would be most beneficial to for-
profit, advertising-supported models. Although there was opposition to such
a system, early NAB members successfully lobbied Congress, and the resul-
tant Communications Act of 1934 codified the for-profit terrestrial radio
broadcast system that exists today.
In 1951, television broadcasters were welcomed into the organization. The
NAB hosts two annual trade shows, one each spring that covers all aspects of
broadcasting, media, and entertainment technology and a second conference,
called the NAB Radio Show, which only focuses on the terrestrial radio
industry and its offshoots. Congress has allowed an exception for terrestrial
radio stations to be exempt from any public performance royalties for the use
of master recordings during their broadcasts, and this has emerged as a key
point of debate in the internet age as artists and labels seek to earn revenue
from such usage. The original argument was that performers benefited as
radio airplay drove consumers to purchase records, and thus radio plays were
a form of free promotion for the artists. With the sales of recorded music
continuing to plummet in the age of streaming, such an argument bears
reconsideration.
NEXT BIG SOUND. Next Big Sound is a music data analytics firm that
allows music industry professionals to view relevant online music data and
reports for artists. Founded in 2008 in New York, New Big Sound uses
metrics such as social media activity, sales data, radio plays, website activity,
and more to provide a snapshot of a particular artist’s popularity.
In 2010, the company teamed up with Billboard to create the Social 50, a
chart measuring the top 50 artists across social media platforms. In 2015, the
company was acquired by the publicly held Pandora Inc.
NPD GROUP INC. The NPD Group Inc. works with a variety of industries,
including the music industry, and offers market research products and solu-
tions for consumers and retailers by tracking consumer behavior. Originally
founded in 1966, the company works with various industries, including auto-
motive, beauty, entertainment, fashion, food, sports, technology, and video
games.
O
OKEH RECORDS. Founded in 1918 by Otto Heinemann, who was a sup-
plier of phonograph players, to diversify his company’s offerings, Okeh was
one of the first record labels in America to identify specific market seg-
ments of the general public and to then market music tailored for that audi-
ence. In particular, their so-called race records captured performances by
many of the day’s most celebrated African American artists, including Louis
Armstrong, Mamie Smith, and Duke Ellington. Similarly, Okeh’s coun-
try/hillbilly line featured popular artists such as Fiddlin’ John Carson, Jim-
mie Rodgers, and the Carter Family. During the 1920, Okeh’s director of
recording, Ralph Peer, displayed an uncanny knack for identifying regional
talent and bringing in new recording artists that suited the exploding pre-
Depression demand for recordings. Columbia Records acquired Okeh in
1926, but its legacy has remained secure today, as a number of the label’s
early recordings, many of them made with portable recording equipment,
document some of the earliest hit records in American popular music.
213
214 • ORCHESTRATOR
ORCHESTRATOR. An orchestrator works closely with a composer to
create the individual parts that a large musical ensemble, such as an orches-
tra, will perform. Orchestrators must have a broad musical vocabulary and be
able to integrate a variety of musical influences and conventions into their
orchestrations. One of the reasons that orchestrators are so important was to
allow composers to do more work simultaneously. A composer could create
the basic musical idea for each part of a new project, turn those ideas over to
their orchestrator, and move on to another new project. Today, orchestrators
are utilized in the film scoring world, although advances in computer soft-
ware have afforded composers more options to create individual parts via
programs such as Finale and Sibelius.
See also ARRANGER; COPYIST.
215
216 • PARENTAL ADVISORY
Pandora offers ad-free subscriptions; however, the majority of Pandora’s
revenue comes from advertisements as a result of consumers who use its free,
ad-supported service.
Pandora Media Inc. was first founded as Savage Beast Technologies in
2000 by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren with the goal of helping
people create their own customized radio station with only music that they
like. This effort was dubbed the Music Genome Project, as the founders
worked to identify up to 450 attributes that could be used to distinguish one
piece of music from another, thereby providing a systematized approach to
making algorithm-derived music recommendations based on an individual
consumer’s demonstrated music preferences. The company became Pandora
Media Inc. in 2004. After beginning as a paid service, Pandora updated its
advertising service to make it available for free.
Pandora launched its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011.
Despite financial struggles, the company continues to be one of the major
streaming music services in the music industry.
See also SPOTIFY; STREAMING MEDIA.
PAY FOR PLAY. A generic term used to denote some form of payment in
exchange for services rendered. Music industry examples include payola or
other inducements in order to gain radio or internet airplay or offering young
artists a performance slot in exchange for purchasing a set number of tickets
to secure the booking.
PEARLMAN, LOU (1954–2016) • 219
PAY OR PLAY. Most recording contracts include a pay or play provision,
which in essence allows the record label to sign an artist and wait until after
they have finished making the contracted record before deciding whether or
not the label will release it. In the event that the label is hesitant to release the
record, they have the option to simply pay the artist a flat minimum fee as
compensation for their recorded performance and then hold back the record
from commercial release. Artists with a moderate amount of clout may be
able to negotiate for guaranteed release of their album, in which case the
“pay or play” provision is struck from the contract.
PETTY, TOM (1952–2017). Thomas Earl “Tom” Petty was a rock singer,
guitarist, and songwriter best known for leading his band, Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers, for more than four decades of recording and touring success.
Petty was born on 20 October 1952 in Gainesville, Florida. Like many of his
generation, the young Petty was galvanized by the 1964 appearance of the
Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, leading him to want to form a rock band.
He started a group called Mudcrutch in 1970 that included a number of
musicians with whom Petty would collaborate for most of his career, specifi-
cally Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. The band relocated to Los An-
geles in 1974 and released one single, which was not a commercial success.
Mudcrutch disbanded in 1975, but Petty, along with Campbell and Tench,
formed the basis of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1976. The group’s
1976 eponymous debut album enjoyed little success at first, but after gaining
significant airplay in the UK it finally appeared on the U.S. charts more than
a year after its release. The band’s distinctive rock sound drew on a number
of influences, including folk rock, country, early rock ’n’ roll, and the then
current trend of new wave. Petty’s own unique, somewhat nasally vocals
were featured over the largely guitar-driven arrangements that became the
Heartbreakers’ forte. As a songwriter, Petty consistently developed catchy,
memorable hooks that embedded themselves in the listener’s consciousness,
while retaining the edgy, outsider point of view he so often took as the
protagonist in memorable hit songs such as “I Won’t Back Down,” “Refu-
gee,” and “Breakdown.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released 13 studio albums, the most
popular of which was their 1979 effort, Damn the Torpedoes, which earned
triple Platinum sales and was produced by Jimmy Iovine. Petty also re-
leased three so-called solo albums, although they often featured significant
musical contributions from members of the Heartbreakers. Of these, 1989’s
Full Moon Fever broke Petty out to a much wider audience, crossing over to
reach not only rock but also popular and alternative listeners. This album in
particular drew heavily on the folk rock sound popularized in the 1960s by
the Byrds, with Petty going so far as to perform a note-for-note cover of one
of that group’s 1965 hits, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better.” It would become the
best-selling album of Petty’s career, earning five-times Platinum sales. An-
other aspect of Petty’s career was the all-star group he joined called the
Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, and Roy
Orbison. The group released two albums that garnered both critical and com-
mercial success.
224 • PHONOGRAMS CONVENTION
Petty was an outspoken artist and in the late 1970s famously challenged
his record company over the terms of his contract, which he felt were unfair.
He made an effective case to the label and was able to renegotiate better
terms, something that artists were seldom able to do in that era. Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers were one of the most consistent concert draws
throughout its career, selling out shows whether or not the straightforward
rock sound that the band offered was then in vogue with the public. Petty lent
his celebrity to a number of charitable causes, such as Live Aid, Farm Aid,
and Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE). As a solo artist and as leader
of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Petty collectively sold an estimated 35
million records worldwide and earned four Grammy Awards. Tom Petty
passed away from natural causes on 2 October 2017 in Santa Monica, Cali-
fornia.
PIANO ROLLS. A piano roll is a roll of paper that is perforated and cut to
encode music. Developed in the 1890s, the roll is played by a mechanical
player, also known as a player piano or pianola. The popularity of player
pianos and piano rolls helped foster an industry focused on supplying new
rolls for consumers to play. The industry peaked in the mid-1920s, declining
as advancements in recording technology made higher-fidelity recordings
commonplace and more affordable.
Piano rolls were the subject of a major copyright case, White-Smith Music
Publishing Company v. Apollo Company. The 1908 Supreme Court decision
ruled that composers did not have to be paid royalties for the manufacturing
of music rolls because the piano rolls were not copies of copyrighted sheet
music. Soon after, the landmark Copyright Act of 1909 reversed this deci-
sion and initiated the first compulsory mechanical license that guaranteed
composers would be compensated when their music was used to create piano
rolls.
PODCASTER. Podcasts are a form of free serialized media that are distrib-
uted via the internet most often by listeners opting in to receive the latest
installments automatically for listening back on a delayed basis on a personal
computer or portable media player. The term itself is a mashup of sorts
referring to the Apple iPod, which became the most popular portable MP3
player in the early 2000s, and the concept of broadcasting. One of the first
podcasters to gain a large audience was former MTV veejay Adam Curry,
228 • POLLSTAR
who in 2004 began a series titled Daily Source Code, which demonstrated the
feasibility of automating and delivering audio content to listeners through
software that would eventually become known as a podcatcher.
Podcasting evolved slowly, but in late 2014 a 12-part podcast dubbed
Serial became a front-page news story, becoming the fastest podcast to ever
reach five million downloads according to Apple Computer. Each episode
was downloaded an average of 3.4 million times and points the way toward
the growth potential for podcasters as the increase in mobile phones makes
taking podcasts along wherever consumers go in their daily lives more prac-
tical. With this growth, advertisers have begun to view the listening audi-
ences being aggregated by popular podcasters as justifying underwriting such
shows. Edison Research reported in March 2016 that 21 percent of
Americans had listened to a podcast in the previous month, representing a
total podcasting audience of 57 million listeners.
PRO RATA. Any time a payment, such as artist royalties, are required to
be paid over a set time period in equal amounts, such payments are said to be
made on a “pro rata basis.” The advantage to the artist and manager is that by
stipulating pro rata payments, a predictable cash flow is more readily attain-
able.
PSY. Psy, born Park Jae-Sang on 31 December 1977 in Seoul, South Korea,
is a popular K-Pop singer, songwriter, and producer, best known for his
groundbreaking single “Gangnam Style,” which became the first YouTube
music video to garner more than one billion views. After attending school in
Seoul, in 1996 Psy went to America to study business but became enamored
with studying music instead and soon dropped out of school, returned to
Korea, and pursued a career in music. He released his first album, Psy from
the Psycho World!, in 2001, a hip hop–influenced set of songs that drew
attention in part due to his overall appearance and quirky dance moves. Psy
did not fit the traditional K-Pop visual blueprint of the good-looking, stylish
young men and women who make up nearly all of the K-Pop bands. His
career evolved over the course of five more albums from 2002 to 2012,
growing a substantial fan base in Korea and Japan and signing with K-Pop
entertainment entity YG Entertainment in 2010. “Gangnam Style” was a
single from his sixth album, and due to the humorous music video released
234 • PUBLIC DOMAIN
on 15 July 2012 to promote the single, both the song and the artist became
global viral video sensations. By December, the video had accumulated more
than one billion views, owing part of its global success to the fact that a
number of high-profile celebrities and artists with large social media follow-
ings had endorsed the video by posting it on their social media accounts. Due
to the song’s global reach, it increased interest and awareness in K-Pop
music in territories such as the United States and Europe.
237
238 • RAGTIME
garage rock elements that often stray from current pop music conventions.
Regardless, the group established itself as one of the most well-known bands
between 1990 and 2016.
In the context of the music industry, Radiohead signed a typical 20th-
century recording contract with EMI Records in 1991, which was completed
with the 2003 release of their sixth album, Hail to the Thief. The band’s
singer and front man, Thom Yorke, has been an outspoken critic of the
traditional relationship between artists and record labels, and the band and
its managers turned the industry upside down by releasing their first post-
EMI album, In Rainbows, in 2007 via their website, the first artist of such
stature to embrace a pay-what-you-want model. This move sparked contro-
versy and debate worldwide as to what the future fortunes of the record
business might look like. Even though fans could opt to download the album
for free, it was released as a physical compact disc in early 2008 in the
United States and went on to sell more than three million copies. The band
has continued to extend the promotion and distribution options used for their
music, while voicing concerns about the viability of the revenue side for
artists to have successful careers if they are to be supported mainly via the
fast-growing media music streaming marketplace.
RESERVES. This term refers to prospective artist royalties that are tied to
anticipated sales of records that have been shipped to distributors and retail-
ers. Until the actual sales are confirmed by the record label, a portion of the
artist’s royalties is held in reserve to cover any potential returns of unsold
copies of the record.
See also RESERVE CLAUSE; RETURN PRIVILEGE.
REST OF WORLD (ROW). The United States remains the largest market
for recorded music, followed by these major territories: Japan, Canada, Ger-
many, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Holland, and Australia. Depending
on the artist and deal, some other western European territories may also be
considered major markets. All other territories are put into a catchall catego-
ry in record contracts referred to as “rest of world,” or ROW. The categor-
ization of these territories has ramifications for the artist royalties that will
be paid out for sales in the various territories. U.S. sales result in the highest
royalty rate payable, while Canada and the remaining “major” territories
have a slightly reduced artist royalty rate calculation. Sales in territories
designated as ROW result in substantially lowered artist royalties, in the
range of 50–66 percent of the U.S. rate.
REUSE FEES. When a recording that was made for one medium is reused
for a different medium, reuse fees apply. For example, if a popular song
made for a music album is reused in a motion picture, the film company will
have to pay reuse fees in proportion to how many performers were on the
original track. Reuse fees, also sometimes referred to as new use fees, are
paid to the original musicians who performed on the initial recording.
ROADIE. A support person who is responsible for the setup, operation, and
basic maintenance of one or more types of musical instruments or perfor-
mance equipment used in live shows by an artist or band. While a band
ROCK ’N’ ROLL • 249
starting out may have only one roadie who handles all of their stage and
performance equipment, a major touring act will have individual crew mem-
bers serving respectively as guitar technician, drum technician, keyboard
technician, computer technician, and so on.
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME (AND MUSEUM). The Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was established in 1983 by Ahmet Ertegun
(cofounder of Atlantic Records), Sarah Evans (editor of Rolling Stone),
Jann Wenner (publisher of Rolling Stone), attorney Allen Grubman, and
record executives Bob Krasnow, Seymour Stein, and Noreen Woods. It was
first founded as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation with the purpose
of creating a museum and a hall of fame.
Cleveland won the bid for the museum’s location. With I. M. Pei as the
architect, the museum opened in 1995 and is one of the city’s most iconic
buildings. The museum boasts of having more than 10 million visitors since
its opening, and 500,000 in 2015 alone.
The museum features interactive exhibits that contain musical instruments,
clothing and props from performances, posters, photographs, correspon-
dence, album art, drafts of song lyrics, and more. In addition, the facility
contains a research library and archives, offers educational programming,
and hosts conferences.
The foundation began inducting honorees into the hall of fame in 1986.
Artists, including performers and composers, are eligible for induction into
the hall of fame 25 years after the release of their first recording. The artist
must demonstrate having had an important impact on rock ’n’ roll. The
foundation has a nominating committee that selects the nominees. Ballots are
sent to hundreds of historians, music industry professionals, and artists for
voting. The top five performers with the most votes are inducted for that
year.
The foundation has received a lot of criticism for who is and who is not
nominated and inducted into the hall of fame. Some accuse the nominating
committee of lacking transparency in process and selecting nominees based
on personal preference and backstage lobbying. In addition, women are
underrepresented, and some rock pioneers have not yet been inducted.
See also MUSIC ARCHIVIST.
ROCK ’N’ ROLL. Rock ’n’ roll, alternately referred to as rock and roll,
rock & roll, or truncated to simply rock, is a genre of music that originated
and evolved in America during the late 1940s into the 1950s. The earliest
forms were based on a variety of earlier popular music styles, particularly
blues, honky-tonk, rhythm and blues, country, and some forms of jazz.
While there has been much debate about the origin of the term itself, the
250 • ROGERS, ROY (1911–1998)
music is readily defined by its insistence on a strong backbeat (beats two and
four when counting in 4/4 time) most often denoted by the snare drum, a
danceable rhythm, and the popularity with which youth of that era imbued it,
eclipsing earlier styles of popular music by a wide margin. Early rock ’n’ roll
songs were often performed using one or two guitars, a bass guitar or string
bass, and drums. Archetypal examples of early rock ’n’ roll include the
music of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Elvis Presley’s
earliest recordings for Sun Records.
See also FREED, ALAN (1921–1965); THARPE, SISTER ROSETTA
(1915–1973).
ROGERS, ROY (1911–1998). Roy Rogers was an actor, singer, and guitar-
ist who earned the nickname “King of the Cowboys” during the heyday of
singing cowboys in 1940s Hollywood. Born Leonard Sly on 5 November
1911 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he and his family moved to California during the
Great Depression, and the young guitarist and vocalist soon helped to found
the Sons of the Pioneers, the most successful western singing group of the
day. Simultaneously, he auditioned for a role in a singing cowboy movie, and
although he did not win the role, he impressed the studio enough to later earn
a callback. Interestingly, Rogers’s first starring role was in 1938’s Under
Western Stars, a role written for Gene Autry, but as Autry had gone on
strike over wages, the part went to the upstart Rogers. Rogers eventually was
signed to a long-term contract with Republic Pictures, for whom he appeared
in eight formulaic films a year, eventually costarring with his real-life wife
and partner, Dale Evans, after they were married in 1947. In addition, he had
a national radio show that ran for nine years, and he made frequent live
appearances.
With the advent of television in the early 1950s, Rogers broke away from
the Hollywood studio system and launched one of the first successful televi-
sion series, The Roy Rogers Show. The half-hour show aired for six seasons,
resulting in 100 episodes, perfect for later syndication. The high profile of
Rogers and Evans led to a wide range of profitable merchandising opportu-
nities for toys and costumes aimed at young viewers of both genders. This
was only possible because, unlike most movie stars of the day, Rogers had
the foresight to secure ownership and marketing rights to his name and
likeness in 1940 when he renegotiated his contract with Republic Pictures.
Although the popularity of the duo faded by the mid-1950s, Rogers and
Evans stayed active as recording artists and made frequent guest appearances
on television and in person throughout the 1960s. He also resumed perform-
ing occasionally with the Sons of the Pioneers. Rogers passed away on 6 July
1998 in Apple Valley, California.
ROLLING STONES, THE • 251
ROLLING STONE. Rolling Stone is an online publication and biweekly
print magazine that focuses on rock music and popular culture. The publica-
tion was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by publisher Jann
Wenner and music critic Ralph Gleason. In addition to covering music, the
magazine is known for its edgy and sometimes controversial coverage of
current events, culture, and politics.
In his first column in Rolling Stone, Wenner stated the mission he saw the
new publication fulfilling when he wrote, “Rolling Stone is not just about
music, but also about the things and attitudes that the music embraces.” He
went on to explain that the magazine’s title referenced the term used through-
out popular music, including Muddy Waters’s blues song “Rollin’ Stone,”
the archetypal 1960s rock band the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan’s 1960s
anthem “Like a Rolling Stone.”
At first, the magazine focused on the counterculture of the times. In the
1970s, it made its way into politics with the famous work Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, a gonzo journalist who popularized
that term. Several other prominent writers launched their career with Rolling
Stone, including Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, and Cameron Crowe.
In 1977, the magazine moved to New York City. During the 1980s, even
though music was the main focus, it became more of a general entertainment
magazine. In the 1990s, Rolling Stone tried to tailor its content to teenagers.
It later abandoned this and returned to covering a mix of content, with a
renewed emphasis on music, pop culture, and politics.
ROLLING STONES, THE. The Rolling Stones are a British rock ’n’ roll
band that rose to prominence in the 1960s as part of the British Invasion and
have gone on to become one of the most commercially and artistically suc-
cessful pop groups in history. The group was inspired by American blues
artists, notably taking their name from a Muddy Waters song title. After a
few early gigs in late 1962, the band’s lineup was solidified, being made up
of Mick Jagger (b. 1943), Keith Richards (b. 1943), Brian Jones
(1942–1969), Bill Wyman (b. 1936), and Charlie Watts (b. 1941).
In March 1963, the band, usually referred to simply as the “Stones,”
undertook a residency at the Crawdaddy Club in London, where former
Beatles publicist Andrew Loog Oldham discovered them and signed on as
the band’s manager. Within a month, he had secured a recording contract
with Decca Records with very favorable terms, including ownership of their
master recordings, artistic control, and a much higher artist royalty rate
than was then the norm. The group proceeded to release three cover songs,
each of which rose higher up the charts than the previous single. The group
became well known throughout the UK, and Oldham decided to play up the
group’s “bad boy” image as a counter to the wholesomeness of the Beatles,
then the most popular group in the world, a strategy that worked very effec-
252 • ROLLING STONES, THE
tively. Based on their success in the UK, the band was booked on a tour of
the United States, which proved ill advised in that they were largely un-
known to U.S. audiences and during their appearance on television the
group’s unkempt look and casual clothing were mocked by the host as they
did not conform to the well-tailored and coiffed looks of the other British
groups. The Stones did, however, get to record for two days at the legendary
Chess Studios and meet their idol, Muddy Waters.
Oldham grew concerned that the band was relying on outside songs exclu-
sively for their records and so pressured members Richards and Jagger to
begin writing some of their own material. While they struggled at first, they
soon found their way and would go on to write a string of hit songs, includ-
ing “The Last Time,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and “Get Off My
Cloud,” all in 1965, with “Satisfaction” topping the U.S. charts for four
consecutive weeks that year and establishing the group as international stars
of the first order. The band continued to develop their songwriting and music
production savvy, going on to release a series of four critically acclaimed
albums from 1968 to 1972, including Beggars Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed
(1969), Sticky Fingers (1971), and Exile on Main Street (1972). Each also
achieved Platinum status in the U.S. market. At the same time, the group
developed a sharp business sense, benefiting from early control of their mas-
ter recordings.
The Rolling Stones were one of the first rock groups to recognize the
power of visual art in quickly gaining the attention of the audience, which
today is commonly referred to as branding. The group’s so-called Hot Lips
logo has been a constant of their image since it first appeared on the Sticky
Fingers album cover. Drawing on various genres of American popular mu-
sic, including blues, country, honky-tonk, and soul, the Rolling Stones creat-
ed a repertoire that has since formed the basis for their substantial longevity
on both the airwaves and as one of the most successful touring acts of all
time. Their 25 studio albums along with the almost military precision of their
extensive world tours, which began in the mid-1970s, have placed the band
at the forefront of the popular music industry as arguably the most durable
and reliable money-making act of all time. Billboard estimated the group’s
1990–2013 concert earnings at $1.5 billion, playing 538 concerts for nearly
20 million fans. Their 2012 tour was billed as the 50 & Counting . . . Tour to
celebrate remaining together and viable as a band for five decades. After
Jones’s untimely death in 1969, the core members remained unchanged until
1992, when bassist Bill Wyman retired. The remaining members, Jagger,
Richards, Watts, and replacement guitarist Ron Wood (1975–present), con-
tinue to record and tour today, supported by a variety of backup musicians.
The group has sold an estimated 97 million records globally over the course
of their lengthy career.
RUBIN, FREDRICK JAY “RICK” • 253
ROYALTIES. See ARTIST ROYALTY.
255
256 • SAMPLING
substantial, the creator of the new musical work may have to assign a portion
of the new work’s ownership to the composer of the original work. As an
example, Coolio’s song “Gangsta’s Paradise” (1995) embodied such a signif-
icant part of Stevie Wonder’s “Part Time Paradise” (1976) that Wonder was
granted an ownership share in the Coolio song.
SERVICE MARK. A service mark is used to register and protect the name
of a musical ensemble, other organization name, or even a slogan. Simply
using the name publicly and having that name associated with one’s service
or ensemble in the mind of the public creates a service mark. However, most
personal managers and record labels will counsel music groups to register
the name, as doing so serves to notify potential competitors considering the
same or a similar name that it has been taken.
SESAC. SESAC is the second oldest performing rights society and was
founded in 1930. The acronym originally stood for the Society of European
Stage Authors and Composers, but from 1940 on it has simply been known
as SESAC. SESAC is a for-profit corporation, and membership is by invita-
tion only. Limiting the size of its member base to a fraction of the members
of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and
262 • SEVEN-YEAR RULE
Broadcast Music Inc. has helped SESAC remain nimble and innovate a
number of technological advances in music usage tracking systems to effi-
ciently monetize its members’ music use.
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND. This 1967 album re-
leased by the Beatles is largely regarded as the first concept album that was a
worldwide best seller, with the band using musical and visual elements to tell
stories about a fictional brass band of the same name. Importantly, it marked
a milestone in popular music as the songs that composed the album were
conceived and created solely as a record, with no intention of performance
before a live audience. With the help of producer George Martin, the group,
along with the Beach Boys, became one of the first to view the recording
studio as a musical instrument in its own right. There is extensive documen-
tation and scholarship on the making of the album, which affords a fascinat-
ing look at the innovative techniques and ideas employed to create a classic
work of art. The album cover is also regarded as artwork equal to the music
and serves as an exemplar of that period’s renaissance in album graphic
design.
SMITH, BESSIE (1894–1937). Bessie Smith was a blues, jazz, and vaude-
ville singer who was born on 15 April 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, into
an impoverished African American family. By the time Bessie was nine,
both her parents were dead and her oldest sister had taken over the house-
hold. Bessie and her older brother began busking on street corners to help
support the family, and by the age of 12 Bessie was invited to join a traveling
vaudeville troupe that featured well-known singer Ma Rainey. While she
initially found employment as a dancer and chorus girl, her vocal abilities
were soon recognized, and in 1923 she signed a recording contract with
Columbia Records. Her first recording, “Downhearted Blues,” became a
tremendous hit, establishing her as the most successful African American
recording artist of the day. Over the next five years, she released a string of
hit records that led to her nickname, “Empress of the Blues.” Her powerful
contralto voice, earthy blue-note inflections, and ability to get the most out of
the emotionally rich blues idiom established her as a model that future sing-
ers from Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin would emulate in varying degrees.
By the end of 1929, Smith’s career was adversely affected by her own
reliance on alcohol, the demise of the vaudeville circuit with the advent of
talking pictures, and the economic devastation caused by the Great Depres-
sion. One of her 1929 performances, of the W. C. Handy song “St. Louis
Blues,” survives as a two-reel film and serves as a reminder of her dynamic
vocal abilities. Smith made 160 recordings for Columbia, many of which
featured the best accompanists of the day, such as Louis Armstrong, Fletch-
er Henderson, and James P. Johnson. Her last recordings from 1933 exhibit a
much rougher voice and did not achieve the same level of success as her
earlier records. She maintained a steady touring schedule even after her
recording career had faded and tragically she was killed in an automobile
accident on 26 September 1937 near Clarksdale, Mississippi.
SOUNDSCAN. The SoundScan system began life in 1991 as the first widely
accepted means to quantify actual sales of records and other forms of physi-
cal media. Prior to its inception, record companies used an honor system to
report sales data, which influenced airplay, charts, and awarding of Gold
and Platinum certifications for records with significant sales. The system
uses a scanner to read the UPC bar code found on records and reports each
sale to a central database, maintained by the Nielsen company. Music indus-
try firms purchase a SoundScan subscription that affords them weekly re-
ports on sales of all records and music videos. Anyone selling a record or
music video with a unique bar code or International Sound Recording
Code may register with SoundScan to measure sales. Since its inception,
SoundScan data was a vital source of information for labels, managers, con-
cert promoters, and broadcasters to understand buying trends of U.S. consu-
mers and capitalize on emerging opportunities. The service began incorporat-
ing digital download sales data in 2003 and online streaming in 2014. To-
day, Nielsen SoundScan, as it is now known, still provides valuable informa-
tion for artists who rely on sales of physical media and includes data from the
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan in its system.
STATUTORY RATE. The rate set by the U.S. Congress and administered
by the Copyright Office for the use of a song in any type of audio recording.
The statutory rate is the rate that is paid by a licensee to secure a mechanical
reproduction license from the rights holder, alternately known as the licen-
sor. The Copyright Royalty Board from time to time reviews the current
statutory rate for such compulsory mechanical licenses and may revise it
when the board determines an increase is justified. At the time of this writ-
ing, the current U.S. statutory rate for a song of five minutes or less is .091,
or .0175 per minute for songs exceeding five minutes in duration. Important-
ly, the current statutory rate is used as the basis for negotiating reduced rates
for music uses via a direct license. When such a reduced rate is referred to, it
may be described as being “50 percent of rate,” meaning the offer is for one-
half of the current statutory rate for the mechanical license in question.
STREET DATE. The street date refers to the actual on-sale date when fans
will be able to purchase a new recording by a particular artist. Inside the
industry, the street date is generally set at least six months prior, to afford the
artist’s personal manager, record label, distributors, and other channel
partners to do prerelease marketing and promotion and build demand for the
new recording. With the rise of internet music distribution and marketing, in
2015 the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry helped
to initiate the consistent use of Friday as the day of the week preferred as the
street date for all new releases.
278 • STUBHUB
STUBHUB. StubHub is an online secondary ticket exchange owned by
eBay. It provides a venue for buyers and sellers of tickets for a variety
events, such as sports events, concerts, theater, and other live entertainment.
Founded in 2000 by Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr in San Francisco, California,
StubHub initially focused on sports events and negotiated a deal with the
Seattle Mariners in 2001. It is currently one of the largest ticket-selling
platforms in the United States.
eBay purchased StubHub in January 2007, and a year later the company
announced that it had seen tremendous growth in music, which became a
priority.
StubHub has come under scrutiny for the additional fees added on to ticket
purchases, which include 10 percent of the purchase price, shipping and
handling charges, and a seller fee. StubHub typically earns 30–35 percent of
the purchase price of each ticket sold.
See also SECONDARY MARKET; TICKETMASTER.
SUPER FAN. A super fan is one who feels a deep, personalized connection
to the artist. They act as a champion and tell their friends about the artist, and
they take multiple opportunities to engage in supporting the artist and the
artist’s musical and other endeavors. Super fans often join an artist’s fan club
or street team and may also aggregate other committed fans for events such
as concerts, listening parties, or other opportunities to celebrate and discuss
the artist and their music.
See also FAN ENGAGEMENT.
SUPERSTAR. This term is used to describe major artists and bands that
have a large, worldwide audience and that have a sustained substantial track
record of hit recordings, sold-out tours, major endorsements, and often multi-
ple affiliated business entities associated with their brand. There is not a
specific dividing line between superstars and midlevel artists, although the
traditional plateau of selling one million records is still used by some in the
music industry to consider whether an artist is nearing superstar status.
281
282 • TERM
ship groups such as Clear Channel Communications, diminishing the diver-
sity in playlists and music programming because the same parent company
could program hundreds of stations from one central office. Additionally, in
the wake of the act the number of radio stations slowly grew while the
number of station owners dramatically decreased. However, as a reaction to
this lack of diversity, many remaining locally owned stations that are not part
of the mega-ownership groups have shifted to a more local focus, including
airing more local news and music, in part as a reaction to the homogenized,
one-size-fits-all programming that has resulted from radio’s deregulation.
TERM. This refers to the length of time that an agreement, such as a man-
agement contract, will be in force. While many music industry agreements
specify a finite term using a calendar as the basis, such as “three years from
the date of this agreement’s execution,” there are some music industry
contracts that use other methods to define the term. One example is some
record contracts, which provide the record label with the option of delay-
ing certain actions such as beginning or releasing a future album if the label
believes it will serve their best interests.
See also ALBUM CYCLE; SEVEN-YEAR RULE.
TERRESTRIAL RADIO. A term used to define radio stations that use pre-
internet technology such as a radio transmitter to send their broadcast signal
to listeners over the public airwaves. Terrestrial radio broadcasts are free to
the listeners, with the stations being funded by the sales of advertisements in
the case of commercial radio or underwriters in the case of noncommercial
radio. Today, the majority of terrestrial radio listeners use a car radio to listen
THARPE, SISTER ROSETTA (1915–1973) • 283
to terrestrial radio broadcasts, while at the same time the advent of the inter-
net and satellite technology have afforded listeners new and different ways
to listen to radio programming.
The first commercially licensed radio station was KDKA in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, which went on the air on 2 November 1920. Early radio was
broadcast and received using amplitude modulation, leading to the term “AM
radio.” From the 1920s to the 1950s, AM radio became the dominant form of
popular media, bringing concerts, variety shows, comedy, drama, the latest
hit parade, and news into homes from coast to coast. In the 1960s, a second
band of radio broadcasting gained popular acceptance, frequency modulation
or FM radio, which led to an explosion of new music programming that went
beyond the previous top 40 model. In addition to home radio receivers,
automobiles offered a captive audience to radio broadcasters, and drivers
became a key audience segment of the burgeoning terrestrial radio industry.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), founded in 1922, is the
trade group that advocates on the behalf of terrestrial radio broadcasters.
One of the unique features of American terrestrial radio is that broadcast-
ers are exempt from paying public performance royalties to artists and
record labels, unlike nearly all other nations. As sales of recorded music has
declined in the 21st century, this has led artists, record labels, and other rights
holders to lobby Congress for this exemption to be eliminated. The NAB has
so far successfully fought off all efforts to institute a public performance
royalty for artists and record labels.
TIDAL. Tidal is a streaming music service owned by rap mogul Jay-Z. The
subscription-based company offers lossless audio and high-definition music
videos, as well as exclusive content, such as livestreams and ticket give-
aways. Tidal’s content is curated by so-called tastemakers to promote new
and emerging artists.
Tidal originated as an offshoot of WiMP, a Norwegian streaming music
service. It officially became known as Tidal in 2014. Jay-Z’s company, Pro-
ject Panther Bidco Ltd., bought Tidal in January 2015 for $56.2 million. The
service is now available to 52 countries across the world.
Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, Alicia Keys, deadmau5, Nicki
Minaj, and several other big-name musicians are Tidal artist-owners. Some
of these artist-owners have partnered with the streaming service to release
exclusive content; for example, the Fenty by Rihanna runway show was
livestreamed for Tidal subscribers.
Under Jay-Z, Tidal has struggled in the streaming music arena as the result
of lawsuits and low subscriber counts. In 2017, wireless carrier Sprint bought
33 percent of the company with plans to offer exclusive content to Sprint
mobile customers.
See also MUSIC STREAMING.
TIN PAN ALLEY. A term used to encapsulate the music industry in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. In particular, songwriting, music publishing,
and the distribution and sale of sheet music were the primary activities of the
men and women who made up Tin Pan Alley. The term also refers to a
specific area in New York City centered on West 28th Street between Fifth
TLC • 287
and Sixth Avenues near Union Square in New York City, where many of the
major publishers of the day were located. While the exact origin of the term
is not definitively agreed upon, one popular argument suggests that the clam-
or from numerous pianos all playing at once as songwriters plied their trade
in the neighborhood’s many publishing houses resembled a great banging on
many tin pans.
The primary motivation for creating songs was to generate profits rather
than satisfy any high art aesthetic. Tin Pan Alley songwriters were a polyglot
of many ethnicities, including an assortment of Jews, African Americans,
Germans, and Irish. Tin Pan Alley’s association with Jews was sometimes
used to denigrate their businesses and their music, but it appears that it was
not their religious affiliation that made the publishers of Tin Pan Alley suc-
cessful but the fact that they were well assimilated into American society,
were fairly young (mid-20s), and had previous experience in sales. In their
first few decades, Tin Pan Alley publishers predominately focused on coon
songs, which were written in dialect with a dark-faced protagonist. Some
African American songwriters wrote songs for Tin Pan Alley publishers, but
they were often paid in cash rather than royalties. The rise of radio broadcast-
ing in the 1930s, which offered free music for listener’s enjoyment, started
the decline in the importance of Tin Pan Alley publishers. In the post–World
War II boom, the spectacular growth of television and record sales resulted in
the Tin Pan Alley publishers that had once been at the apex of the music
industry in America to no longer holding a dominant position.
TLC. TLC was one of the most successful female R&B groups of all time.
The members included Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins (b. 1970), Lisa “Left Eye”
Lopes (1971–2002), and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas (b. 1971). The group was
formed in Atlanta in 1981 and signed with LaFace and released their first
album, Ooooooohhh . . . On the TLC Tip, in 1992. The album established
their playful, confident, fashionable style and contained hits including
“Baby-Baby-Baby” and “What About Your Friends.”
In 1994, Lopes, who had struggled with alcohol abuse since her teens, was
arrested for arson after burning down the mansion of her boyfriend, Andre
Rison. Rather than serving jail time, she was sentenced to probation and
entered an alcohol rehabilitation program. Nevertheless, TLC’s second al-
bum, CrazySexyCool, was very successful and showed a more mature but
still sensual side of the group. It won a Grammy for Best R&B Album and
contained the hit singles “Creep,” “Waterfalls,” and “Red Light Special.”
The album would go on to sell more than 11 million units in the United
States and 23 million globally.
Despite selling millions of records, TLC filed for bankruptcy in 1995 after
going over $3.5 million in debt. Some of their financial issues were due to
Lopes’s insurance payments following the arson charge for destroying her
288 • TOP 40 RADIO
boyfriend’s house. The group also accused their record label of not paying
out their share of royalties. The case was viewed as another in a series of
bankruptcy proceedings brought by successful artists against their record
labels in the 1990s, largely to obtain more favorable royalty terms than what
had been agreed to when the group was just starting out. The matter was
resolved with a confidential out-of-court settlement that was believed to have
awarded higher royalties to the hit-making trio and allowed them to continue
making their next album.
TLC released their third album, Fanmail, at the beginning of 1999. “No
Scrubs” and “Unpretty” were both hit singles from the album. The album
won the group another Grammy for Best R&B Album. Tensions growing
within the group rose as they were preparing to tour and fueled rumors that
the group might break up.
In 2001, the group went back to the studio to work on new material.
Meanwhile, Lopes was working on her own solo career. In April 2002, Lopes
was involved in a fatal car accident while traveling in Honduras. She died
from severe head trauma. Thomas and Watkins decided to complete the
album, 3D, and released it in November 2002. The group made what was
then billed as its final performance at a concert in New York in June 2003
with a video projection of Lopes, while the album, on which Lopes’s perfor-
mances on two songs were included, sold more than one million units.
While TLC officially had gone on hiatus, they made occasional appear-
ances on recordings or in person, sometimes with Lopes’s parts played back
from a recording and her image on a video wall behind the group. Remaining
members Watkins and Thomas decided to make a fifth album and ran a
successful crowdfunding initiative to raise the necessary funds. They also
embarked on a few limited-run tours that demonstrated the group’s continued
relevance to fans. While their legacy includes both the incongruity of one of
the most successful vocal groups using bankruptcy proceedings to rewrite
their contract, as well as the high-profile struggles of Lopes to cope with
alcohol and anger issues, the group’s legacy of selling more than 75 million
records worldwide makes them one of the most important groups of the
1990s.
TOP 40 RADIO. A radio programming format that features the most popu-
lar songs repeatedly to help ensure the maximum listening audience. The
goal is to keep listeners tuned in and gaining the greatest audience share,
which results in enhanced advertising revenues. It’s based on observations
made in the mid-20th century by radio programmers that people in restau-
rants would pay to hear the same songs over and over again on the jukebox
even though they had recently been played. As popular music evolved during
the second half of the 20th century, radio adapted new and various radio
formats to cater to specific market segments, but within each one would
TOUR SUPPORT • 289
favor the most popular songs with repetitive airplay over introducing new
and lesser-known artists or songs. The term “top 40” is derived from the
popular music charts maintained by industry publications, such as Billboard,
which track and report weekly on airplay, sales, and other measures of a
song’s popularity.
TOP LINE. “Top line” refers to the creation of a melody and lyrics to go
over the top of a preexisting beat or instrumental backing track. With the
advent of popular computer-based composing programs, it has become com-
monplace for music composers and producers to create a beat and send it to
a variety of top line writers who compose and submit a melody and lyrics to
complete the song. Since only one top line will be chosen, this means that for
many top liners (the term used to refer to the melody/lyric composer) their
work may not be used on the final version of the song. Unlike the more
common songwriting practices of the 20th century, when one music compos-
er would often pair with a compatible lyricist for an ongoing series of musi-
cal collaborations spanning decades, such as Elton John and Bernie Taupin,
today’s use of top line composers has resulted in occasional confusion over
which involved party has a justifiable claim as a cowriter on tracks that use
the top liner method for creation. Successful top liners recommend clarifying
in advance with the music producer or beat maker what use may be pos-
sible/allowable for their contribution to any prospective collaboration to help
minimize potential future disputes pertaining to ownership shares.
TWAIN, SHANIA. Known for fusing rock, pop, and country, sing-
er–songwriter Shania Twain (b. 28 August 1965) is the best-selling female
artist in the history of country music and is one of the best-selling music
artists of all time. Twain grew up in Ontario, Canada, and performed at local
bars, radio and television stations, and community events. Her parents died in
a car cash when she was 21, and she took care of her younger siblings until
they were grown.
Twain signed with Mercury Nashville and released her first album in
1993. She met and fell in love with Robert John “Mutt” Lange, a music
producer who worked with AC/DC, Def Leppard, and others. The two
worked on her subsequent albums The Woman in Me (1995) and Come On
Over (1997). Both albums were very successful, with the former achieving
sales of more than 12 million U.S. copies and the latter exceeding 20 million.
TWAIN, SHANIA • 291
Both albums clearly show the influence of Lange’s hard-rock aesthetic.
Twain’s music videos often include sexual imagery, which she was both
praised and criticized for.
Her success waned slightly with the release of her fourth album, Up
(2002), which debuted at number one and eventually would go on to sell
more than 11 million copies in the U.S. In 2010, she and her husband di-
vorced. Over the course of her career, Twain is estimated to have sold more
than 75 million records.
U
U2. U2 is an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1976 and comprising Adam
Clayton (b. 13 March 1960), Larry Mullen Jr. (b. 31 October 1961), Bono (b.
Paul David Hewson on 10 May 1960), and the Edge (b. David Howell Evans
on 8 August 1961). Respected throughout the industry for both their artistic
and commercial success, U2 is known for their extended live performances
and for having sold more than 106 million albums worldwide over their
career, making them one of the most successful groups in history.
The group formed while the members were schoolmates in Dublin, pro-
gressing over time so that in 1980 they released their first album, Boy, on
Island Records. The group’s third album, War (1983), resulted in their first
UK number one, largely on the strength of the hit single “New Year’s Day.”
The group developed a reputation for powerhouse live concerts, with a sound
marked by the group’s propulsive rhythm section, the effects-laden melodic
guitar work of the Edge, and Bono’s passionate vocals. The group’s insis-
tence on addressing political and social issues further endeared them to fans
around the world as societal issues such as famine, intolerance, and human
rights were all front-page news. The group was one of the featured perform-
ers at the 1985 Live Aid concert for famine relief in Africa. Next, they joined
the 1986 Conspiracy of Hope Tour for Amnesty International to increase
awareness globally of human rights abuses. These two high-profile charity
projects helped U2 become one of the most recognized rock groups in the
world during the 1980s and set the stage for their next release.
In 1987, the group recorded a career-defining album, The Joshua Tree,
which would go on to become their best-selling release, attaining Platinum
status in the U.S. and charting more than 25 million units sold worldwide.
The album topped the charts in 20 countries and spent nine weeks atop the
U.S. charts. Following the album’s release, the group began to perform in
select stadiums when ticket demand justified the larger-scale venues. The
Joshua Tree Tour played to three million fans and grossed $40 million.
While the period 1988–1997 was marked by the release of four more
Platinum albums, Rattle and Hum (1988), Achtung Baby (1991), Zooropa
(1993), and Pop (1997), it was the massive and elaborate tours that the group
293
294 • U2
would mount in support of these albums that came to define the era of
stadium rock concerts better than any other group. For example, the
1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour featured an extensive stage set with large video
screens flashing seemingly random messages, many parodying popular cul-
ture and society’s reliance on television. Bono assumed different stage perso-
nas, including a televangelist and an outrageous egomaniac dubbed “The
Fly.” Fans responded well, and the North American leg of the tour earned
$67 million. In 1993, the group continued the tour in Europe, Australia, New
Zealand, and Japan, so that by its conclusion later that year, they had per-
formed for 5.3 million fans. The group’s succeeding tours each topped the
prior one as U2 continued to build their global audience through a combina-
tion of carefully timed releases, massive worldwide tours, and the group’s
sociopolitical activism, most often represented by Bono as the spokesperson
for charitable causes.
In 2008, the group signed a 12-year agreement with Live Nation Enter-
tainment for $100 million, affording Live Nation the exclusive rights to
promote their tours worldwide and handle merchandise, sponsorships, and
online activities for the band. The group and their management team then
decided to mount what can be described as the most ambitious tour to date
with the group’s U2 360 Tour, which began in January 2009 and continued
through July 2011. What made the effort significant was that the group
designed an in-the-round staging system that would allow them to perform in
the world’s largest stadiums at full capacity. To do so and still afford fans a
memorable concert experience, the largest stage set ever built, with a 164-
foot-tall four-footed futuristic structure dubbed “The Claw,” would stand
over the stage, supporting the sound, lighting, and video display systems. By
the conclusion of the 31-month-long U2 360 Tour, the group had once again
broken records, having sold 7.3 million tickets and grossed $736 million in
receipts.
With respect to their recordings, in the 21st century U2 released four more
albums, bringing their total to 13 studio albums. These included All That You
Can’t Leave Behind (2000), How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), No
Line on the Horizon (2009), and Songs of Innocence (2014). The first three
each achieved multi-Platinum worldwide sales; however, Songs of Inno-
cence, only sold 100,000 units in the United States. After such significant
sales on their 12 previous studio albums, the reason this album didn’t have as
much commercial success is that U2 partnered with Apple Computer to
release the album exclusively on 9 September 2014, before it would go on
sale in stores, as a free download to 500 million Apple users around the
world. Many in the music industry reacted angrily and suggested that this
further supported the perception among the public that music should be free
during a time when record sales were plummeting. Additionally, Apple had
not provided an opt-in feature for regular customers of its iTunes music
UPSTREAMING • 295
store, so everyone simply found the new album downloaded to their music
library whether they wanted it or not. Still, the method of the album’s initial
release, similar to Radiohead’s 2007 release of In Rainbows, signified that
artists were ready to challenge traditional record distribution models. After
the dust had cleared, an estimated 33 million consumers did download Songs
of Innocence, while 81 million listened to it, according to Apple executives.
U2 continues to perform and record and has recently mounted a tour to
celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of The Joshua Tree, which
features a live performance of the entire album by the band. More than 40
years after their inception, U2 still remains a vital force in the music industry,
having been recognized with a total of 22 Grammy Awards by their peers.
VH-1. VH-1 was launched on 1 January 1985 and is part of Viacom Media
Network, owner of MTV. VH-1, short for Video Hits One, was aimed at an
older demographic than the teens that were drawn to MTV’s programming.
Featuring a more mellow mix of music than MTV, VH-1 quickly gained a
following among the 18- to 35-year-old age group by featuring more pop
than rock music videos with a sprinkling of jazz and R&B, which at the time
was referred to as urban contemporary. Similar to MTV, VH-1 relied on
veejays, on-air hosts who were knowledgeable about music and had a style
that matched the intended audience, announcing each video and sharing the
latest music news.
297
298 • VICTOR
In the 1990s, the network created a range of original programming that
gave the public more intimate backstage profiles of music stars, both the
towering success stories and the shocking failures, which drew substantial
audiences. These programs included VH-1 Storytellers, Behind the Music,
and Legends, all of which have continued to be rebroadcast in subsequent
years. Additionally, they funded a series of 12 feature-length motion pictures
under the moniker Movies That Rock, using as a basis stories drawn from the
lives of actual musicians to reimagine and fictionalize episodes from their
lives.
In 1997, the VH-1 Save the Music Foundation was formed, which is a
501c3 nonprofit subsidiary that since its founding has raised more than $48
million dollars to provide musical instruments to more than 1,800 schools
across America. The foundation also helps to advocate nationally for music
education as part of every well-rounded student’s development. In the 2000s,
VH-1 added reality television to its programming, in part to appeal to a
younger audience and to keep pace with the fast-moving pop culture land-
scape.
WARNER MUSIC GROUP. Warner Music Group is one of the three ma-
jor record labels and the only one that is American based. It is a true
multinational media company with offices in 50 countries and more than
3,500 employees worldwide.
Warner Bros. began as a film company in 1923. In 1929, company founder
Jack Warner founded Music Publishers Holding Company, an in-house pub-
lishing and music rights group, to secure music copyrights and thereby
control the costs to acquire music for his motion pictures. In 1930, Warner
Bros. briefly entered the recording industry with the purchase of Brunswick-
Balke-Callender, a recording company in Iowa. The following year, the com-
pany sold Brunswick-Balke-Callender. In 1958, Warner Bros. formed its
own recording company and label and focused on jazz artists, including Paul
Desmond and Chico Hamilton. The company expanded into popular music
soon after and acquired the Reprise label in 1963, Atlantic in 1967, and
Elektra in 1970 and formed Warner-Elektra-Atlantic (WEA). Just before the
Elektra purchase in 1969, Warner Bros. record operations were purchased by
Kinney National Company, led by Steve Ross. Ross would go on to lead
299
300 • WARNER MUSIC GROUP
Warner through one of its most productive periods until his death in 1992,
reorganizing the various arms of the company under the umbrella name
Warner Communications.
A great deal of the label’s success may be attributed to the contributions
made by the Atlantic executive team, including Jerry Wexler and Ahmet
Ertegun, who brought a rich catalog of rhythm and blues hits to the company
and in 1969 began signing the most popular UK acts of the time, which
further increased the company’s sales. They helped lead the ATCO Records
subsidiary into new genres, including hard rock, heavy metal, and art rock,
and continued to record and release records by innovative jazz artists. Some
of the most popular WEA artists of the 1970s and 1980s included the Rolling
Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, the Eagles, and Prince,
to name a few. Jazz artists included Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Chick
Corea, Miles Davis, Bob James, and George Benson. Throughout this period,
the company also continued to forge strategic partnerships with other labels
and record distributors around the world, furthering their sales.
In 1987, WEA acquired Chappell Music Publishing and combined it with
their own in-house group to form Warner/Chappell Music, one of the largest
music publishers in the world. Time Inc. acquired WEA to form Time-
Warner in 1989. By the early 1990s, Time-Warner was the largest music
company in the world, with multibillion-dollar revenues and an estimated
worth of more than $20 billion. However, it seemed the company had be-
come focused on growth as a priority and went on to merge with then internet
leader America Online (AOL) in 2000, a move that shocked many in the
music industry due to upstart AOL’s rapid ascent to prominence. The new
company, dubbed AOL Time Warner, continued to make acquisitions; how-
ever, the precipitous downturn for internet-focused companies that occurred
shortly after the merger weakened AOL to the point that their debt load was
onerous, and as a result, the decision was made to sell off Warner Music in
2004 to Edgar Bronfman and an investment group.
Under new leadership, Warner divested itself of some divisions, including
Warner Brothers Publications, the arm that published sheet music, and fur-
ther embraced digital music distribution by licensing its music to new distrib-
utors such as Spotify and Google Play. By 2008, it was reported the Warner
subsidiary Atlantic was the first record label to earn more than half of its
U.S. revenue online. In August 2011, Warner Music Group was purchased by
Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries for $3.3 billion, and the company was
taken private. Today, the Warner Music Group is home to a wide range of
record labels and music-related companies, most notably Warner/Chappell
Music, its publishing arm.
WEIN, GEORGE • 301
WARPED TOUR. The Warped Tour was the longest continuously running
music festival in North America during its 24-year run (1995–2018). It was
noted for its role in helping to break dozens of new bands in a variety of
genres and introduce them to a broader audience. The touring festival played
to an estimated audience of more than 12 million fans over its lifetime. In
1996, Vans shoe and clothing company joined with founder Kevin Lyman
as the naming sponsor, after which time it was named the Vans Warped
Tour. From its inception, the festival has always had a philanthropic focus,
with a portion of the sale price of every ticket being donated to charity, as
well as providing many nonprofit organizations with booth space at each stop
on the tour to help them attract additional support for their causes.
307
308 • YOUTUBE
growing video streaming subscription customer pool. YouTube is currently
part of Alphabet Inc., the parent holding company of Google and other ven-
tures.
Appendix A
UNITED STATES
American Federation of Television
and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)
Academy of Country Music
5757 Wilshire Boulevard, 7th Floor
5500 Balboa Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Encino, CA 91316
(855) 724-2387
(818) 788-8000
www.sagaftra.org
www.acmcountry.com
American Guild of Music (inde-
American Association of Indepen-
pendent music teacher organiza-
dent Music (A2IM)
tion)
132 Delancey Street, 2nd Floor
PO Box 599
New York, NY 10002
Warren, MI 48090
(646) 692-4877
(248) 686-1975
http://a2im.org
www.americanguild.org
American Choral Directors Asso-
American Guild of Musical Artists
ciation (ACDA)
(AGMA)
545 Couch Drive
1430 Broadway, 14th Floor
Oklahoma City, OK 73102
New York, NY 10018
(405) 232-8161
(212) 265-3687
www.acda.org
www.musicalartists.org
American Composers Alliance
American Music Therapy Associa-
PO Box 1108
tion (AMTA)
New York, NY 10040
8455 Colesville Road, Suite 1000
(212) 568-0036
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.composers.com
(301) 589-3300
www.musictherapy.org
American Federation of Musicians
(AFM)
American Society of Composers
1501 Broadway, Suite 600
and Publishers (ASCAP)
New York, NY 10036
1900 Broadway
(212) 869-1330
New York, NY 10023
www.afm.org
(212) 621-6000
309
310 • APPENDIX A
CONTENTS
Introduction 343
Libraries and Archives 345
Scholarly Journals 346
Magazines 346
Web Resources 346
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias 347
General 347
Autobiographies 348
Biographies 348
History 350
Intellectual Property 353
Music Publishing and Licensing 354
Primary Sources 354
Record Labels 355
Sound Recording 355
Documentary Films 357
INTRODUCTION
343
344 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
A great place to get an overview on the history of the music industry is
Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from
Edison to the LP (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and Selling Sounds:
The Commercial Revolution in America (Harvard University Press, 2001).
For information about the status of the music industry in the 21st century,
start with any of these three works: All You Need to Know about the Music
Business (Simon & Schuster, 2015), This Business of Music: The Definitive
Guide to the Music Industry (Billboard Books, 2007), and Music Business
Handbook and Career Guide (Sage, 2016). These books are sometimes used
as essential textbooks for music management programs across the country.
One major reference source for the history of the music industry is Grove
Music Online (Oxford University Press). Grove requires a subscription and is
available from many public and academic libraries. It contains The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition (2001); The New
Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992); and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz,
2nd edition (2002). Entries from The Grove Dictionary of American Music,
2nd edition (2013), and The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 2nd
edition (2014), are slowly being added to Grove Music Online. Overall,
Grove contains biographical and subject entries; for example, it has an excel-
lent “Music Industry” entry. While the main focus is on Western Classical
music, Grove is slowly adding and expanding its popular music and non-
Western coverage.
Information pertaining to the music industry can also be founded in these
notable reference works: The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular
Music (Faber and Faber, 1990), St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
(St. James Press, 2000), The Harvard Dictionary of Music (Belknap Press,
2003), and How Products Are Made: An Illustrated Guide to Product Manu-
facturing (Gale Cengage Learning, 2000). AllMusic.com is also an excellent
website to find background information on artists and groups, including dis-
cographies and awards.
Articles on historical and current topics pertaining to the music industry
can be found in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. Popular Music & Society
(Routledge) focuses on popular music as a manifestation of society and cul-
ture. Popular Music (Cambridge University Press) provides multidisciplinary
coverage of all aspects of popular music, including musicology, literary stud-
ies, sociology, and economic and social history. The MEIEA Journal is pub-
lished by the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association and
includes scholarly research and writing about the music and entertainment
industries. Notably, back issues of the MEIEA Journal are available for free
to the public via the organization’s website. Music Business Journal (Berklee
College of Music) is a respected student publication that provides a forum for
research and discussion on current topics in the music marketplace.
BIBLIOGRAPHY • 345
There are and have been hundreds of other popular music journals
throughout the history of the music industry. Perhaps the most notable for
their popularity and longevity, as well as historical and current significance,
are Billboard and Rolling Stone. Beyond music-focused popular sources,
newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times also
provide excellent coverage of the music industry, with reviews, interviews,
and analysis of current events.
The following bibliography provides further reading on the history of the
music industry in the United States of America. The sources are listed under
general topics and include books, journal articles, and web resources. Addi-
tionally, a list of approximately 70 documentary films exploring various
aspects of the music industry has been compiled. Any student or researcher
would do well to browse this list and select a few films for viewing in order
to develop a more nuanced understanding of the inner workings of the music
business. The majority of the documentary films referenced take a biographi-
cal or historical approach and include multiple music genres and subcultures,
from heavy metal to punk, new wave, gospel and jazz.
Some resources listed might require a subscription. This bibliography
should not be considered a comprehensive list but rather a helpful place to
build on the information provided in this volume. For books with multiple
editions, the most recent one is cited since the date of publication of this text.
A select number of older sources that are considered classics have also been
included.
American Music
ARSC Journal
Entertainment and Sports Law Journal
Journal of Popular Music Studies
Journal on the Art of Record Production
Journal of the Society of American Music
Music and Entertainment Industry Educators (MEIEA) Journal
Music Business Journal
Popular Music
Popular Music & Society
MAGAZINES
Alternative Press
American Songwriter
Billboard
Downbeat
Electronic Musician
Gramophone
Music Week
Pollstar
Rolling Stone
Spin
Vibe
WEB RESOURCES
GENERAL
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Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and
Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. New York: Times Business,
1998.
Cash, Johnny, and Patrick Carr. Cash: The Autobiography. New York: Har-
perCollins, 2003.
Clapton, Eric. Clapton: The Autobiography. New York: Broadway Books,
2008.
Clooney, Rosemary, and Joan Barthel. Girl Singer: An Autobiography. New
York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Gordy, Berry. To Be Loved. New York: Grand Central, 1994.
Grant, Amy. Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far. New York: Broadway
Books, 2008.
Guthrie, Woody. Bound for Glory: The Hard-Driving, Truth-Telling Auto-
biography of America’s Great Poet–Folk Singer. New York: Plume, 1983.
Holiday, Billie, and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues. New York: Har-
lem Moon, 2006.
Jay-Z. Decoded. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2011.
Jones, Quincy. Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. New York: Double-
day, 2001.
Richards, Keith, and James Fox. Life. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2011.
Simmons, Russell, and Nelson George. Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money +
God. New York: Crown, 2001.
BIOGRAPHIES
Azzerad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. New York:
Doubleday, 1994.
Birkbeck, Matt. Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, and Madness. New
York: Amistad, 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHY • 349
Bozza, Anthony. Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009.
Breslin, Herbert, and Anne Midgette. The King and I: The Uncensored Tale
of Luciano Pavarotti’s Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Some-
time Adversary. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Chilton, John. Let the Good Times Roll: The Story of Louis Jordan and His
Music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Friedman, Myra. Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. New York:
Harmony Books, 1992.
Goodman, Fred. Allen Klein: The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the
Stones and Transformed Rock and Roll. New York: Houghton Mifflin,
2015.
Gould, Jonathan. Otis Redding. New York: Crown Archetype, 2017.
Graham, Bill, and Robert Greenfield. Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside
Rock and Out. New York: Da Capo Press, 2004.
Gray, Tyler. The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest
Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History. New York: Harper Business, 2008.
Greenman, Ben. Mo’ Meta Blues: The World according to Questlove. New
York: Grand Central, 2013.
Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston:
Back Bay Books, 1995.
Hoskyns, Barney. Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits. New York:
Three Rivers Press, 2010.
Jones, Dylan. David Bowie: A Life. New York: Crown Archetype, 2017.
Kaplan, James. Frank: The Voice. New York: Anchor, 2010.
———. Sinatra: The Chairman. New York: Doubleday, 2015.
King, Tom. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New
Hollywood. New York: Broadway Books, 2001.
Light, Alan. What Happened, Miss Simone? A Biography. New York: Crown
Archetype, 2016.
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music. 5th
ed. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Mazor, Barry. Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music. Chicago:
Chicago Review Press, 2016.
McNally, Dennis. A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful
Dead. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003.
Porter, Lewis. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2008.
Prial, Dunstan. The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American
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Pyron, Darden Asbury. Liberace: An American Boy. Chicago: University of
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350 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ramone, Phil, and Charles L. Granata. Making Records: The Scenes behind
the Music. New York: Hyperion Books, 2007.
Ritz, David. Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye. New York: Da Capo
Press, 2003.
Rosenberg, Deena. Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and
Ira Gershwin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Slichter, Jacob. So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star: How I Machine-
Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a
Drummer’s Life. New York: Broadway Books, 2004.
Smith, R. J. The One: The Life and Music of James Brown. New York:
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Woideck, Carl. Charlie Parker: His Music and Life. Ann Arbor: University
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Yates, Janelle. Woody Guthrie: American Balladeer. Staten Island, NY:
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HISTORY
Aletti, Vince. Disco Files: New York’s Underground Week by Week. Lon-
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Music. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The
History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press, 2014.
Chang, Jeff, and DJ Kool Herc. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-
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Charnas, Dan. The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 351
Fauser, Annegret. Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World
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352 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
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INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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About the Authors
Veronica A. Wells is associate professor, library faculty chair, and the aca-
demic support librarian for music at the University of the Pacific in Stockton,
California. She leads the library’s research help instruction program as well
as the library’s efforts in assessing students’ information literacy skills. As
the music librarian, she provides research consultations and library sessions
to music students and faculty, manages the music collection, and monitors
the processing and cataloging of music materials. Her research interests in-
clude assessing information literacy skills, developing active learning strate-
gies for library instruction, and scaffolding information literacy into the mu-
sic curriculum. Veronica is involved in the Music Library Association
(MLA) and the California chapter of the Music Library Association
(MLACC).
361