From the first Tin Pan Alley tunes to today's million-view streaming hits, pop songs have been supported and influenced by an increasingly complex industry that feeds audience demand and regulates supply. As musicians and performers have created new styles and content to satisfy public craze for novelty, music producers, distributors, promoters, and even lawyers have also evolved to present that music in the best way. Harvey Rachlin investigates how music entered American homes and established a cultural institution that would expand throughout the decades to become the multi-billion dollar industry. As form followed function, the music produced shaped and was shaped by consumer buying habits, technological advances, new distribution channels, expanding global markets, and legal strictures. Exploding in the 1950s and 60s with pop stars like Elvis and the Beatles, the music industry used new technologies like the television to promote live shows and record releases. More recently, the development of online streaming services has forced the music industry to cultivate new promotion, distribution, copyright, and profit strategies. Growing in tandem with each other, pop music and its business has become a relationship that has defined our shared cultural history. This book not only charts the music that we all know and love but also reveals our active participation in its development throughout generations.

About the Author
Harvey Rachlin runs the Music Business and Music Internship program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. Rachlin is the author of 13 books including The Songwriter's Handbook and The Encyclopedia of the Music Business. The latter title won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism, was named Outstanding Music Reference Book of the Year by the American Library Association, and was recommended by composer Henry Mancini on the 1984 internationally-televised Grammy Awards. His music books have been praised by Elton John, Aaron Copland, Johnny Mathis, Pat Boone, and the Academy Award-winning songwriters Burt Bacharach, Sammy Cahn, Marvin Hamlisch, Henry Mancini, Richard Rodgers, and Jule Styne.


Book Information
ISBN 9781538112120
Author Harvey Rachlin
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 612g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 161mm * 30mm