Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Hit Men is the shocking, highly controversial expose of the venality, greed, and corruption of many of the assorted kingpins and hustlers who rule over the music industry. "A sobering, blunt, and unusually well-observed depiction of the sometimes sordid inner workings of the music business."--Billboard. 4 pages of photographs.
Amazon.com Review
A nauseatingly honest and therefore controversial expose of the base beings that inhabit the higher levels of the music industry. Filled with horror stories that will confirm your worst suspicions about the toxicity of what my friends and I call "Planet CD Wood."
Customer Reviews
J. Michalowski Said: Hit Men is well, a Hit ( Jul. 24th 2010 )
Having grown up during the period this book covers and being a huge music fan, I thought I knew a little something about the music industry. Wrong again!
This book is a fascinating read into the inner workings of the business - particularly "independent promotion". I always suspected there was a fair amount of shady characters but not quite to the extent that there really were (and perhaps still are?). The author's research appears to be thorough and solid. This is not an easy read - there are a lot of names to keep track of and that I often had to go back and reread some sections but it was worth it.
If you are a music fan, particularly of the 60's - 90's you will probably find this book extremely captivating. Don't expect to read about artists (to these guys they were "product to sell" - this book focuses on the people behind the music - and does it very well.
John S. Harris Said: Twenty years later, still a fascinating and insightful read. ( May. 24th 2010 )
Wow. If only you knew how treacherous the music business is. Read this and you'll know.
"Hit Men" confirms what many music lovers saddened by the boring state of commercial rock radio already suspected: hit records are bought and paid for by the promoters, not made by the fans. Don't allow yourself for one second to believe ever again that radio stations are pushing songs into heavy rotation because they are responding to what their listeners want. They are doing so because someone is paying a LOT of money to cram those songs down your throat. As bad as this was in decades past, I dare say it is even worse now (in 2010).
"Hit Men" pulls back the curtain on the major players and activities in the record business over a period of several decades and reveals some extremely ugly and disheartening truths about how that business operates. I doubt anyone reading this book will regard the music business or the radio business with anything other than contempt from now on.
Want to know why certain songs become hits? It's because someone paid for it to happen. It has nothing at all to do with consumer preference. Well, at least not primarily.
Are you a fan of The Who? Want to know the REAL reason their 1981 album "Face Dances" tanked? Read this book.
Want to know the REAL reason artists on certain labels get massive amounts of airplay while artists on other labels struggle to get heard? Read this book. But here's a hint -- it has nothing to do with the quality of the music.
Educated readers will probably make the logical assumption that there are a great many industries that operate as the music business has and does. Welcome to the real world, folks. It's all about the money. In any battle between commerce and art, commerce has the advantage. Get used to it.
Fascinating, fascinating reading. Just as relevant today as it was when it was published in 1990.
Timothy J. Kavanagh Said: Almost perfect product ( Jun. 21st 2009 )
Very salacious commentary on the people that run the record business. I would've appreciated a forward that updated the author's views on the business now that the record labels are adapting so terribly to the digital age.
Moondoggie Said: I lived this book ( Feb. 14th 2009 )
I am an 18 year veteran of EMI Music Distribution (CEMA) and know a lot of the characters here, especially the ones from Philly and later, in LA. He's pretty much dead on - this place was rife with BS and chummy boys club mentality, plus a whole lot of out and out crime - from drugs, to free goods, to payola. I saw it all. This book, although written sloppily, pretty much nails it
Michael D. Mallinger Said: Good Look at Why Payola Hurt Lesser Known Artists ( Mar. 3rd 2008 )
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.