The same issues caused huge international record seller HMV to pull out of the U.S. market after five years. “In our case it was about...

Rather than making things easier, Universal’s Jump Start program made things even more difficult. To get a discount on CD prices,...

Like Sam Goody, Jack Eugster once sold tchotchkes, albeit as the head of a department store chain. Also like Goody, Russ Solomon started...

One of the methods the clubs used to recruit members – was to give away records as a premium, another practice that continues unabated....

One of the biggest problems the record business faces, besides letting people know that their product exists at all, is actually getting...

It bears repeating: in commercial radio the format is flypaper, and all of us are the flies. To extend the metaphor a bit, the format is...

Once again, the scourge of independent promotion became a watchword around the industry, the only way to get anything played. The indies...

And musically, what did the end of the Network era augur? Well consider the #1 records in 1985, the year before the Network hit the fan....

A couple friends of one music commentator promote records independently. They use their contacts and experience in specialised markets to...

During that investigation, several Sony/BMG promotion department memos became public: “Please be advised that in this week’s Jennifer...

As a result of the hearings, Clark was forced to divest himself of many of his side businesses, ancillary to his hit television show...

The power of the DJ led to some of the more interesting courtship rituals in corporate America. The record companies catered to vices the...

At the turn of the 20th century, phonograph records were not the only game in town. As America became more affluent, every well-heeled...

The bottom line is that radio and records have become big business, and as the business gets bigger, the players seem to become more...

This scene takes place in a radio station programming department. Ring! Ring! “WHNK programming. Hank here.” “Hey, this is Beth from PoMo...

At its heart, Selector is a database program. The director of programming or music at the radio station inputs information for each song...

Back in the 1970s, radio meant the world to many a folk. One avid fan of album rock station WNEW-FM, he says; “I learned more about music...

Throughout 1996 and 1997, rarely did a month go by without the announcement of some Sillerman acquisition. Then he sold off all his radio...

Starting in the Reagan administration, regulations that had held media ownership in check for five decades began to get stripped away. By...

Who owns the airwaves? Who actually has the ultimate rights to all those broadcast frequencies? The airwaves in America (and indeed, in...