Off the charts

Music as big business may be decades old, but only recently have its business methods copied those of other industries: the point now is not music but its marketing. By 1994, more than a decade after the dawn of MTV and the age of the compact disc, over 90 percent of the nation's music distribution was consolidated in the grips of six multinational companies. Rock 'n' roll had grown up, bought a proper suit, and gone to work at corporate headquarters. But despite the growth and new image, the music business has remained a game played by savvy street-smart executives. Chief among them is Charles Koppelman, a songwriting contemporary of Carole King who went on to become chairman/CEO of EMI Records Group North America, which made him one of the wealthiest and most powerful record moguls in the world. As this book shows, EMI knew it could spend millions of dollars on creating new hits like Vanilla Ice, Arrested Development and Wilson Phillips - all artists doomed to eventual failure. Heap on enough hype, though, and the software-hungry corporate giants will fight to swallow any expense in the all-important name of market share. . Entertainment reporter Bruce Haring demonstrates how newly accurate chart systems forced labels to pay attention to alternative, country, and rap - and how the labels got wise and began selling prepackaged, homogenized rebellion. He investigates the multi-million-dollar label mergers, publicity-ripe big-money signings, raging battles in the suites on the high floors, and corruption in promotion downstairs. Over fifty music executives were interviewed for this book, including the top ranks of EMI Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, and Warner Music, U.S., as well as numerous artists, attorneys, publishers, accountants, A & R executives, and publicists. The result is an immensely fascinating, disturbing, and explosive expose of the multi-billion-dollar popular-music machine.