a book
Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
Fredric Dannen · 1991 · 432 pages
Copiously researched and documented, Hit Men is the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business.
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Daniel Ek
“Still the essential biography of the music industry. Dannen is pretty ruthless in describing a time in the music business when hustle was the name of the game — although that’s pretty much the same today, to be honest. I joke that I used to have hair before I started working in the music business, but thankfully the staggering levels of corruption that Dannen describes no longer exist.”↗
Nile Rodgers
“This is an amazing look at the dirty underbelly of the recorded music business. It mainly examines the highly lucrative boom years in the 80s. At that point, the profits were so big that the deals became more complicated, chaotic, and crooked. Elektra Records president Joe Smith’s introduction of recording industry luminaries at a charity dinner says it all: ‘With this group of cutthroats on this dais, every one of you would be safer in Central Park tonight than you are in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel.’ This book is jaw-dropping.”↗