Song and System

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.