Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

Dannen hit such a home run with this thoroughly researched book that he was honored from within the music industry (Ralph J. Gleason award) and without (national bestseller list). The topic here is unwholesome practices within the music industry, but the most passionate subtopic of Dannen’s research is the system of independent promotion through which singles are “added” to radio station playlists and then moved through the charts. I almost think HIT MEN should be considered a must read for anyone in the music industry: artist, manager, songwriter or publisher. Since Dannen reports his quotes exactly as they come down, you will not find the dialog exactly suitable for Sunday School. The second edition covers events up to and including 1991 and contains a follow-up chapter not in the original 1990 hardback edition. Now, some years after its original introduction, HIT MEN is still gripping and relevant. Aspects of the described litigation still tend to resurface from time to time, and many of the key players identified and profiled by Dannen are still suited up and swinging on the music-business diamond. Ron Simpson, School of Music, Brigham Young University. Author of MASTERING THE MUSIC BUSINESS.
Rating: 5 / 5

As an experienced music industry professional with over 15 years of experience, I can tell you that this is the unofficial history book of the music industry that can be used to expose and introduce the truth about the origins and operations of the music business.

It’s insightful, relevant, and shocking.

Buy it today.
Rating: 5 / 5

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.
Rating: 4 / 5

This book shook the music world when it was first released, which was when I first read it. I just recently picked it up and read it again, and it was still an equally mind-blowing experience.

What was with those guys? Why did they feel the need to rip off every artist to the maximum possible extent? Couldn’t they still have been just as powerful, just as legendary, and very nearly as wealthy, if they’d paid the artists the few pennies per record or airplay that would have been their rightful compensation for creating the music that rocked the world and brought billions of international dollars into American coffers?

Whatever happened to Dennis Waitley and his “win-win” scenarios? You don’t hear much about him any more. Perhaps his concepts were too anathematic to the American mindset. Whatever happened to the concepts of “noblesse oblige,” and “from those who have received much, much is expected”? Whatever happened to “a rising tide lifts all boats”? Whatever happened to the Magna Carta, the Renaissance, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and all the other movements that raised the world to the dizzying heights it once achieved?

I guess they’ve been replaced by that all-American concept, “whoever dies with the most toys wins.”

As we watch the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and rising fuel prices cause the American dream to recede into the sunset while our beloved representative republic slips back toward medieval fuedalism; as we watch American corporations, once looted from without by corporate raiders, now being looted from within by greedy and/or incompetent executives with golden parachutes while their stockholders, employees and retirees have their lives decimated, we can at least hope that what we do here will stand forever as an example to the rest of the world of how NOT to live.

Osama bin Laden, in his famous “letter to America,” called us the worst civilization the world has ever seen, wallowing in decadence and depravity and calling it the height of individual freedom. Could he have been right?

This book gives the reader a valuable opportunity to take a close-up look at one of the foundation pillars of our economy and our culture, and witness the process by which America is rotting from within.
Rating: 5 / 5

A frightening and enthralling look at the history of the modern music business. Dannen creates a mosaic of life in the industry by tracing the histories and careers of some of its most colorful characters. He looks at the rise and fall of Walter Yetnikoff, the education of Dick Asher, David Geffen’s success with Asylum Records– to name just a few of the people and issues _Hit Men_ tackles.

This is really a warts and all treatment with wickedly funny asides and adult language quotations from the people involved. It made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion and I still came away feeling as though I understood a whole lot more about how this industry really functions.

High Recommend.
Rating: 5 / 5