About the Book

The music industry is in crisis. Sales are down, artists restless with long-term contracts, and consumers angry at escalating CD prices. New technologies are rapidly changing the way music is recorded, sold, and enjoyed. Although these challenges appear to be unprecedented, a look back at the last 100 years shows that the recording industry has always initially feared - but eventually profited from - rapid shifts in the way music is recorded, distributed, and performed.
Breaking Records gives a narrative history of American popular music and the pop music industry. Organized by decade, each chapter gives an overview of the major developments, technologically, commercially, and musically, for all types of popular music making. Technological developments, from the irth of radio and the phonograph to downloading, file sharing, the burning CDs, are described in relation to how they affected musicians and the industry itself. Key performers and their major hits are profiled by decade.
Breaking Records tells us the compelling story of how business and art have interacted, and soemtimes clashed, through a century of new musical developments. Students of pop culture and music history, music-business historians, and general fans of American music will enjoy this account of the growth, maturation, and world of American musical culture.