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 for its ever-evolving supply of hits.
Harvey Rachlin investigates how music entered American homes and established a cultural institution that would expand throughout the decades to become a multibillion dollar industry, weaving a history of the evolution of pop music in tandem with the music business. Exploding in the 1950s and '60s with pop stars like Elvis and the Beatles, the music industry used new technologies like 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.
Pop music and its business have defined our shared cultural history. Song and System: The Making of American Pop Music not only charts the music that we all know and love but also reveals our active participation in its development throughout generations.

Harvey Rachlin runs the Music Business and Music Internship program at Manhattanville College. 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. He lives in Purchase, New York.

Chapter One: The Dawn of Pop
Chapter Two: Pop In the Alley
Chapter Three: Booze, Airwaves and Celluloid Spark the Biz
Chapter Four: The Road to Rock and Roll
Chapter Five: Screaming for Elvis and the Beatles
Chapter Six: A Golden Age of Pop Hits
Chapter Seven: Disco Fever and Music Video Fervor
Chapter Eight: The Boom of Streaming
Chapter Nine: The Rise of Hip Hop and Rap
Chapter Ten: A New Age of Pop Star
Chapter Eleven: A Hierarchy of Popular Songs
Chapter Twelve: Pop Goes the Future
Appendix A: 100 Years of Hit Songs: A Select List
Appendix B: Rock and Roll Labels of the 1950s, '60s and '70s and Some of Their Major Artists