Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
by Fredric Dannen
List Price:
Our Price: $8.40
You Save: $8.55 (50%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.44 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Fredric DannenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1991-07-02
ISBN: 0679730613
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
Book Review: Good Look at Why Payola Hurt Lesser Known Artists
Summary: 4 Stars
In "Hit Men," Fedric Dannen offers a comprehensive look at the payola scandal that plagued major record labels and Top-40 radio stations during the 1980s. Dannen explains that a recession initially drove the major labels to hire independent promoters to gain a competitive advantage over smaller labels. The major label executives knew that these promoters were bribing radio stations to play singles, but continued to use them anyway. As payola grew, the major labels were forced to compete amongst each another for the services of these promoters, who kept sapping away greater portions of the industry's lifeblood. The book explains in detail why collective action against payola was extremely difficult to organize. In the end, federal law enforcement largely failed to punish the wrongdoers, allowing payola to continue long after the end of the 1980s.
In the late 1970s, the popularity of "Saturday Night Fever" led the major record labels to glut the market with disco. Many label executives believed they could impose limits on the number of records that retailers could return for refunds. Failure to impose limits hit the major labels hard, leading them to adopt questionable measures to keep their own artists on the airwaves. They hired independent promoters who eventually would charge as much as $100,000 to turn a single song into a hit. These promoters organized themselves into a loosely knit cartel, dividing the nation up into territories in order to monopolize individual radio stations. Dannen explains that their real power came from their ability to prevent songs that they weren't paid to promote from becoming hits. He gives several examples of songs that should've blown up on the radio, but didn't.
The program managers at the Top-40 radio stations were complicit in this scam. They were well aware that other stations took their cue from Top-40 playlists, and that people generally purchased albums containing songs they've heard on the radio. Top-40 stations typically received more than 200 new singles per week and wanted to play songs that they knew ahead of time were going to become hits. They began accepting cash, drugs, and other forms of bribery in exchange for playing songs pitched by independent promoters. Before long, songs by artists on smaller labels disappeared from the airwaves. The situation quickly spiraled out of control, with some independent promoters like Joe Isgro making more than $10 million per year.
Dannen explains that Warner Brothers was the first major label to take a principled stand against payola. Warner had waited for other labels to launch a boycott first, and was concerned about being undercut by competitors. CBS joined the boycott a year later. However, in one of the story's most disheartening developments, artists whose songs began to disappear from the radio raised a ruckus, effectively killing the boycott. Congressional investigators who sought information from label executives ran into a brick wall when independent promoters' mafia connections threatened to shakedown anyone who talked. An attempt by the RIAA to launch an investigation was quashed due to concerns about its inability to keep information out of the mafia's hands. Instead, it took excellent reporting by NBC Nightly News to get to the bottom of the story in order to shed light on the problem's sheer magnitude.
In the end, a string of procedural errors by federal prosecutors let many of the leading perpetrators off the hook. When the record executives finally endeavored to stamp out payola at the end of the decade, the artists again complained and began hiring independent promoters on their own. As payola continues to exist, Dannen questions whether forcing artists to pay for independent promotion instead of killing payola had been the music industry's goal all along.
In reading this book, one is struck by the dichotomy faced by major record label executives who complained about the problem, but declined to organize themselves for fear of short term economic losses. Readers will find their rhetoric to be similar to congressional leaders who complain about pork barrel spending. They repeatedly admonish such wasteful spending, but decline to do anything about it for fear of being voted out of office by angry constituents who want their share of the pie. Another example is OPEC, the international oil cartel in which member nations routinely undercut one another in order to line their own wallets at the expense of the group as a whole. Seeing how horrible the payola situation really was, it is small wonder that so many wonderful songs, like, for example, "Sheena is Punk Rocker" by the Ramones, never got their due on the radio.
My only quibble with "Hit Men" is that, at times, the book lacks focus. Dannen spends too much time on the personalities, philosophies, and leadership styles of the major players at the labels including Walter Yetnikoff, Clive Davis, Dick Asher, David Geffen, and others. The book would have been stronger if it had focused entirely on the problems caused by payola and suggested potential solutions instead. All in all, though, it is a fascinating account of what happened and sheds a great deal of light on why so many important artists never got their due in the public eye. Music fans everywhere owe Dannen an enormous thanks for ensuring that this story saw the light of day.
Business & Investing Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Books For A Better World
Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions Paperbook, 186)by Jorge Luis Borges
New Directions Publishing Corporation; Published: 1964-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops:
The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dreamby Paulo Coelho
HarperSanFrancisco; Published: 1995-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2-Disc Collector's Edition)Universal; Release date: 2005-01-04; DVD
Best price: $10.00
Price in other shops:
Against the Grain (Ã Rebours)by J. K. Huysmans
Dover Publications; Published: 1969-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.95
Price in other shops:
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Pressby Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair
Verso; Published: 1999-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.19
Price in other shops:
Fata Morganaby William Kotzwinkle
Marlowe & Company; Published: 1996-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
The CorporationMOORE,MICHAEL; Release date: 2005-04-05; DVD
Best price: $17.30
Price in other shops:
Three Colors Trilogy (Blue / White / Red)Release date: 2003-03-04; DVD
Best price: $21.62
Price in other shops:
In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of A. V (Phoenix Fiction Series)by Stephen Vizinczey
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1990-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $50.00
FollowingSony; Release date: 2001-12-11; DVD
Best price: $4.54
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolutionby Dave Kusek, Gerd Leonhard
Berklee Press; Published: 2005-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.15
Price in other shops:
Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes, and Hustlers of the Warner Music Groupby Stan Cornyn, Paul Scanlon
Published: 2002-02-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.52
Price in other shops:
Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Cultureby Jac Holzman, Gavan Daws
Jawbone Press; Published: 2000-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.71
Price in other shops:
Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafiaby William Knoedelseder
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 1993-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
The Label: The Story of Columbia Recordsby Gary Marmorstein
Thunder's Mouth Press; Published: 2007-02-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $24.14
Price in other shops:
Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You Hear Sucksby Hank Bordowitz
Chicago Review Press; Published: 2007-01-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.66
Price in other shops:
Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Outby Bill Graham, Robert Greenfield
Da Capo Press; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.95
Price in other shops:
Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excessby Walter Yetnikoff, David Ritz
Broadway; Published: 2004-03-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.66
Price in other shops:
The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerceby Fred Goodman
Vintage; Published: 1998-03-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.10
Price in other shops:
All You Need To Know About the Music Business: 6th Editionby Donald S. Passman
Free Press; Published: 2006-11-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.89
Price in other shops: