Pennies from Heaven

by Russell Sanjek

Book Overview

The technological and economic revolutions of the twentieth century have transformed the music business many times over. Pennies from Heaven is the definitive account of those transformations, from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306807068
• ISBN13: 9780306807060
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 790 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good

Like every other thing that's around us the music industry has a history, and the music industry has a dark and hidden history filled with events that are better left unsaid. Not in this book, it presents the history of music from the first recorded piece up to the MP3 digital era of this century. Good structure and revealing information will not let you drop this book out of your hands, it's captivating content and insightful advice about the industry are things that you just cannot miss when searching for information about this area

An Awesome Work of Scholarship

Okay, by no stretch of the imagination is this light reading. But there is nothing else like this book out there; nothing else gives you such a thorough picture of how the business of music in the 20th century has affected what we hear and buy and listen to.The whole century is here: how the ASCAP/BMI battle raged for years and influenced everything from swing recordings to attitudes about rock and roll; how records and juke boxes and radio and movies changed the way writers made money; how recording artists "became" composers. And yes, here's one more way in which the Beatles changed the face of popular music.In some ways the book can be disheartening for those who always figured that the world of popular music was a true capitalist meritocracy. But as the battle over napster and the net rages, it's interesting to see how the gulf between writers, performers, and the public has ALWAYS been a horrible morass of money, power, laws, unwritten rules, and manipulation.This is a work of thorough and inpeccable scholarship. It's as if he knew that no one else was going to try to tell this story, so he'd better include every last tidbit. Fascinating in its detail, amazing in its scope, this is a must-read work for any student of American popular music.