Abstract

Who controls the music?

This article presents information about the music industry in the U.S. The biggest beneficiaries of pops commercialism were no lone goniffs, but the major record companies, which really cleaned up in the sixties. Though they'd been slow to spot the gold in rock and roll, the majors soon caught on, and then prevailed: Warner, CBS, PolyGram, RCA. MCA and Capitol-EMI had 81 percent of U.S. market share by 1974. The profits were immense, high enough to lay the basis of the national entertainment state: Warner Bros. Inc. could not have gone on to become the largest media corporation in the world without that awesome income from electric blues and acid rock. Typically, the business is now trying to save its bacon by promoting yet another costly format: the digital versatile disc, a six-track gizmo that promises extreme fidelity, and whose coming would force us all to buy new discs and a new thing to play them on.