Capítulo 1
The Music Industry's Dark Underbelly: A Century of Exploitation and Innovation
In a cramped New York office in 1966, a jelly-like music executive named Mike Stewart, president of United Artists Music, demonstrated his power by forcing his diminutive sidekick Murray Deutch to get an unnecessary shoeshine. This display of dominance wasn't unusual in the music business-an industry built on exploitation, opportunism, and occasional brilliance. Simon Napier-Bell witnessed this scene firsthand before rejecting their offer to join the songwriters' "Alcatraz" of the Brill Building, where talents like Neil Sedaka and Carole King toiled in tiny rooms. Years later, while managing The Yardbirds, Napier-Bell realized he needed to understand the business machinery behind the music. His investigation uncovered a fascinating history of hustlers, visionaries, and artists who created an industry that has shaped global culture for over a century-a business that began with a simple legal principle: the ability to own a song.
Capítulo 2
The Birth of Music as Property
The modern music business began with a stroke of legal innovation. In 1710, Britain's Statute of Anne established that written works could be owned as property for fourteen years (extendable for another fourteen). Since music could be written down, it received the same protection. Crucially, the law allowed authors to assign their rights through contracts-creating the foundation for music publishing.
Before this, the only music business involved paying musicians to perform and charging audiences to watch. Now, music itself could be owned, bought, and sold like real estate. When America gained independence, it kept Britain's copyright framework, setting the stage for parallel industries to develop on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Britain, Samuel Chappell partnered with pianist Johann Baptist Cramer in 1810 to publish music, including works by Beethoven. After Samuel's death, his son Tom revolutionized the business by publishing popular music alongside classical pieces. Unlike classical compositions that took years to build an audience, popular songs could be engineered into hits within months through aggressive promotion-often by bribing singers to perform them. When Tom Chappell signed Gilbert and Sullivan, whose operettas contained catchy, piano-friendly tunes perfect for middle-class homes, Chappell became Britain's dominant music publisher by the 1890s.
In America, Jewish immigrants found the entertainment industry more welcoming than other businesses. The turning point came in 1894 when Charles K. Harris, after receiving just 85 cents in royalties from his publisher, established his own company. His tearjerker "After the Ball" became the best-selling song in history after he paid baritone James Aldrich Libbey to perform it and arranged for bandleader John Philip Sousa to play it hourly at the Chicago World Fair. The sheet music sold over two million copies.
Harris's success inspired other amateur songwriters to become publishers. Many came from sales backgrounds-Edward B. Marks (buttons), Joseph Stern (neckties), Leo Feist (corsets), and Aaron Gumbinsky/Harry von Tilzer (socks). These newcomers revolutionized the industry through aggressive "plugging"-hiring people to sing in public places, "booming" (planting performers in audiences), and distributing cheap copies in department stores. Louis Bernstein would have pianists perform songs 30-40 times nightly at Madison Square Garden: "It was forced down their throat... when people walked out they'd be singing the song."
With pianos in nearly every home (even poor families bought them on installment plans), publishers needed songs amateur pianists could play easily. They developed a formula: simple chords, obvious rhythms, limited vocal ranges, and a standard 32-bar AABA structure. This predictable format became addictive to listeners who enjoyed anticipating the changes. Songwriting wasn't considered art-companies employed writers working nine-to-five in cramped rooms, mixing old bits with new while searching for catchy phrases.
Capítulo 3
The Recording Revolution Begins
Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877 revolutionized sound recording, though others had come close before him. Edison's machine used a horn, stylus, and tinfoil-covered cylinder to both record and play back sound. Despite its poor quality and inability to make copies, Edison masterfully promoted its possibilities. Investors paid him $10,000 plus royalties for marketing rights, with demonstration machines earning up to $1,800 weekly at fairs where people paid to hear their own recorded voices.
While Edison focused on other inventions, Charles Tainter and Chichester Bell developed the "graphophone" using wax-coated cardboard cylinders instead of tinfoil. When they received a patent despite similarities to Edison's design, Edison countered by adopting their wax cylinder idea. After legal battles loomed, investor Jesse Lippincott acquired rights to both technologies and eventually merged them into Edison Bell.
Meanwhile, Congressional stenographers formed the Columbia Graphophone Company, initially promoting recording machines for dictation but soon recognizing their entertainment potential. With no duplication process yet available, singers had to perform the same song multiple times for multiple recording horns-an exhausting process for popular artists.
German-born inventor Emile Berliner revolutionized the industry with his flat-disc "gramophone" that traced sound waves side-to-side rather than up-and-down. After perfecting a method to create a "mother" disc for pressing duplicates, Berliner formed an investment consortium raising $25,000 to launch his business. The shellac material from the lac bug proved perfect for record production.
William Owen established The Gramophone Company in London, initially selling American-made Berliner machines. After selling 3,000 players and 150,000 imported records, Owen expanded by bringing over Berliner's nephew Joseph Sanders to handle pressing and Fred Gaisberg to find recording artists. The company grew into a Europe-wide operation with partnerships across the continent and even in India, where "The Laughing Record" sold over half a million copies.
Owen purchased Francis Barraud's painting of a fox terrier named Nipper listening to a talking machine for 100. Though originally painted with an Edison cylinder machine, Owen had Barraud repaint it with a Berliner flat disc player, creating the iconic "His Master's Voice" image-despite the logical inconsistency that flat disc machines couldn't actually record.
Competition intensified as Columbia targeted Berliner's patents with aggressive legal action. When Berliner's American marketing manager Frank Seaman sided with Columbia in a patent dispute, they created the Zonophone to compete with Berliner's machine. Depressed, Berliner surrendered his company to his engineer Eldridge Johnson, who successfully countersued and renamed the company Victor. Johnson and Owen formalized their relationship, splitting the world between Victor in America and HMV in Britain, creating four major global record companies: Victor, Columbia and Edison in America, and HMV in Britain.
Capítulo 4
The Dreyfus Brothers' Publishing Empire
In 1888, fourteen-year-old Max Dreyfus arrived in New York from Germany, one of thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing European persecution. With dreams of becoming a concert pianist, he initially stayed with his aunt in Brooklyn and found work selling fabrics. New York was booming with landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Metropolitan Opera House under construction, while popular music flourished in theaters, vaudeville shows, and saloons throughout the city.
Max leveraged his piano skills to secure a job at Howley & Haviland, accompanying singers demonstrating songs. He became invaluable to partner Paul Dresser, transcribing his hummed melodies into properly structured songs with chord progressions. Despite helping create Dresser's monster hit "On The Banks of the Wabash," Max received only language coaching rather than financial reward.
After moving to T. B. Harms, Witmark's chief rival, Max finally got freedom to compose. He churned out dozens of songs, many with ragtime melodies, but found little success until his piano instrumental "Cupid's Garden" became a hit. Hearing his creation played in bars and restaurants across town only depressed him-it sounded ordinary, uninspiring. Max realized he lacked the talent to be a great songwriter and decided his fortune would have to come from publishing instead.
Harms specialized in Broadway shows rather than vaudeville, and as Tom Harms aged, Max convinced his brother Louis to join him in purchasing a 25% share of the company. Max recognized they needed better material and writers who could compose specifically for the stage.
Eighteen-year-old Jerome Kern, from a respectable German-Jewish immigrant family, had been writing songs since school. After working briefly at Edward B. Marks' publishing house, Kern received an inheritance and approached Dreyfus at T. B. Harms. Impressed by Kern's playing, Dreyfus hired him at twelve dollars weekly. Noticing the company's financial struggles, Kern proposed buying a share of the business. The cash-strapped Dreyfus brothers accepted, making the teenager a 25% shareholder. Max was delighted-he had both the perfect new writer and the money to run the company properly.
Capítulo 5
Broadway Transforms American Music
The American musical evolved from a British invasion at the turn of the twentieth century. George Edwardes, former production manager for Gilbert & Sullivan, created a new form of musical entertainment at London's Gaiety Theatre. Using the theater's electric lighting for spectacular staging, he developed shows with modern dress, cheerful songs, and sharp dialogue aimed at a mass market. His masterstroke was the chorus of "Gaiety Girls"-shop assistants transformed into the image of ideal womanhood through training in song, dance, and social skills.
Edwardes' shows featured music by well-educated gentlemen composers like Ivan Caryll (a Belgian who married Gilbert & Sullivan's favorite leading lady) and Lionel Monckton (son of London's Town Clerk and Oxford-educated). Their success made songwriting an acceptable profession for gentlemen, attracting other educated composers like Paul Rubens (Oxford), Howard Talbot (London University), and Sidney Jones (Trinity College Dublin).
When America's Music Publishers Association began honoring foreign copyrights, British musicals stormed Broadway. The show "Florodora" became a massive hit with its sextet of petite girls flirting with young toffs. During the first fifteen years of the 1900s, over thirty British musicals opened on Broadway, with Chappell, Witmark & Sons, and T. B. Harms becoming the three publishers most connected to these productions.
The Shuberts, who rose from poverty to own thirteen East Coast theaters, loved musicals and became beloved by music publishers. Witmark particularly benefited through their relationship with Victor Herbert, an Irish-born, Austrian-raised composer who charmed his way into American musical society. His light operas like "Babes in Toyland" and "The Red Mill" made him America's most beloved composer, straddling both classical and popular worlds.
The Dreyfus brothers at T.B. Harms played the long game with Jerome Kern, initially finding little success with his songs. Max positioned him as a rehearsal pianist who could write numbers on demand. Despite being difficult to work with-once stealing orchestra parts from a theater when displeased with arrangements-Kern gradually built his reputation. When twenty-year-old Kern and lyricist Edward Laska wrote "How Would You Like to Spoon With Me?", Kern brazenly lied to get them into Lee Shubert's office, claiming Reginald De Koven had sent them. This Shubert connection later led to Kern writing "Paris is a Paradise for Coons" for a young Al Jolson in "La Belle Paree."
Capítulo 6
The Birth of Modern Popular Music
In 1906, London's trendy young upper-middle class embraced the "Sausages for Tea" dance, performed to American cakewalk music but with distinctly British lyrics. This represented the first indication that American Black music could influence popular culture worldwide. The second major influence would be "Alexander's Ragtime Band."
Henry Waterson, a nearly deaf former diamond dealer who had lost his fortune gambling on horses, formed a music publishing company with songwriter Ted Snyder. Snyder, fresh off his hit "Wild Cherries Rag," discovered a twenty-year-old singing waiter working in a cheap Union Square restaurant.
Issy Baline, who became Irving Berlin, was desperate for success. After reading about the 1908 Olympic Games, he wrote lyrics about an Italian-American barber who bet his shop on a disqualified marathon runner. When he brought these to Waterson & Snyder, Henry Waterson offered him twenty-five dollars for both lyrics and melody, though Issy hadn't written the tune yet. Forced to improvise on the spot, he created his first minor hit.
Waterson & Snyder hired him as staff lyricist for $25 weekly plus royalties, and he adopted his new name: Irving Berlin. His breakthrough came with "My Wife's Gone to the Country! Hooray!" where he discovered the power of a single repeated word. Waterson made Berlin president of the company to keep him from leaving.
Berlin's masterpiece "Alexander's Ragtime Band" initially received little enthusiasm, but after plugger Max Winslow's persistence and vaudeville singer Emma Carus's performance, it exploded worldwide, selling a million copies and launching a global dance craze. The song revolutionized popular music by emphasizing the "off-beat" (2 and 4), introducing subtle black musical influences to mainstream audiences worldwide.
Capítulo 7
Personality Becomes the Product
Eva Tanguay exemplified how personality could trump musical talent in early entertainment. Despite an average voice, she became the highest-paid performer of her day ($3,500 weekly) through sheer outrageousness. Born in Quebec to a doctor who died when she was young, Tanguay craved attention and began performing at age eight. Her wild stage presence featured manic costumes (including one made from 4,000 Lincoln pennies), sexual provocativeness, and a shrieking vocal style that compensated for the lack of microphones. She simulated sexual satisfaction onstage, bounced her voice between extremes, and cared little if her breasts escaped her legally-required bra. Tanguay managed her own nationwide tours, orchestrated publicity stunts, and embodied the philosophy that "personality, personality, that's the thing that always makes a hit"-becoming essentially a rock star before such a concept existed.
Two other female performers matched Tanguay's outrageousness: Britain's Marie Lloyd and France's Mistinguett. Lloyd used suggestive winks and innuendo to make innocent songs scandalous, once demonstrating to a vigilance committee how she could make the respectable "Come Into the Garden Maud" sound obscene while performing her bawdiest numbers with complete innocence. Mistinguett (born Jeanne Bourgeois) became France's first major musical export, selling herself as "the queen of le spectacle risque" with legs insured for half a million francs.
Four pioneering artists helped push recording technology to the public. Bert Williams became the first black singer to reach mainstream popularity, shocking society when Ziegfeld hired him for the 1910 Follies. When dancers protested, Ziegfeld firmly stated, "I can replace every one of you except the one you want me to fire." The American Quartet specialized in spine-tingling barbershop harmonies that sheet music could never capture, recording for both Victor and Edison. The elegant dancing couple Vernon and Irene Castle became trendsetters who helped popularize records through their Victor Records dance series, while reinventing the foxtrot and running nightclubs with their lesbian manager and all-black orchestra.
Standing above all others as the first truly great recording star was Enrico Caruso. His classically trained tenor voice had exactly the frequency range best suited to acoustic horn recording. Victor Records and Caruso helped each other immensely-Victor popularized Caruso, while Caruso made records a permanent part of American life through his 260+ recordings. Though he primarily recorded opera, the quality of his voice convinced even non-opera lovers to buy his records.
Capítulo 8
The Industry Organizes and Profits
As songs lost their earning power after initial popularity, publishers sought ways to monetize their catalogs beyond sheet music sales. The solution was collecting fees whenever songs were played publicly-in restaurants, cafes, theaters, parks, and hotels-an idea that initially seemed outrageous to many but would transform the music business forever.
The concept of collecting performance fees wasn't entirely new. Puccini had been shocked to learn his melodies played in American restaurants earned him nothing, explaining that Italy's SIAE already required payments for public performances. American publishers worried this might complicate song promotion, while Britain's William Boosey dismissed such "vexatious rights" as continental nonsense.
Nevertheless, composer Victor Herbert drove the American initiative forward, with George Cohan advocating for an organization including both publishers and writers. Their first meeting at Luchow's restaurant drew only nine of thirty-six invitees, with notable absences including Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Despite the poor turnout, they appointed Englishman George Maxwell as chairman, and a month later, at a second meeting at Hotel Claridge, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) was officially formed. Britain followed two months later with the Performing Rights Society, established on April 1, 1914, with William Boosey overcoming his earlier objections to become its first chairman.
These societies effectively merged writing and publishing into a single industry known as "the song racket." They functioned as exclusive clubs where top writers aligned with major publishers against newcomers. Both PRS and ASCAP collected flat fees from venues playing music, initially facing resistance from most establishments except concert halls. Their payment structures favored those with the most influence, with publishers and composers categorized from AA to D. At ASCAP, Witmark and T.B. Harms were the top publishers, with Victor Herbert and George M. Cohan as the leading writers. Similarly, at PRS, Lionel Monckton and Chappell topped the rankings.
World War I created unique opportunities for music publishers as patriotic and sentimental songs captured public sentiment, generating massive sales despite questionable deals for songwriters. The first major British wartime hit, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," was written by music hall artist Jack Judge on a five-shilling bet that he could compose a performable song in one afternoon. Publisher Bert Feldman bought it outright for just 5, then sold over a million copies without paying Judge any royalties.
America's wartime anthem was George Cohan's "Over There," written in thirty minutes after President Wilson declared war. Vaudeville singer Nora Bayes recorded it first, with her picture on sheet music that sold 1.5 million copies, while Caruso's passionate rendition sold another half million. Publisher Leo Feist, recognizing war's profit potential, paid Cohan an unprecedented $25,000 advance for the song.
Capítulo 9
The Modern Music Business Emerges
After WWI, America's music industry found itself predominantly run by Jewish executives who tended to hire other Jews first but otherwise practiced relatively equal opportunity employment. Black Americans often found it easier to secure positions with Jewish-run companies than elsewhere. These business-minded executives prioritized profits over personal taste, providing whatever music the public demanded.
Post-war New York began hearing jazz, a distinctive new style from black musicians arriving from New Orleans and Chicago. The city's top jazz nightspot was Dreamland, where musicians like Alberta Hunter (who ran away from home with just fifteen cents) found work. For black musicians, Dreamland became a social club; for whites, it was a place to go slumming. White songwriters like Gus Kahn would hear songs there, pay a few dollars, and publish them with added names on the credits.
By the 1920s, major publishers like Leo Feist operated nationwide networks with printing presses and pluggers in every city. In New York, songwriters worked factory-style, churning out songs like cars on a Detroit assembly line. Each morning began with newspaper searches for topical stories to inspire the day's compositions, with Prohibition becoming a particularly fertile subject.
Publishers developed "cut-ins" to get famous performers to record their songs. Al Jolson exemplified this practice with "California Here I Come"-after Buddy De Sylva and Joe Meyer wrote it for his show, Jolson demanded $5,000 cash and royalties from Witmark, rejecting Remick's offer of $1,000 cash plus promissory notes.
In America, Broadway remained the epicenter of hit-making as musical shows boomed, with the Dreyfus brothers controlling the industry through "graft contracts" that required all writers to publish with Harms. Max Dreyfus had secured top young writers like George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans alongside Jerome Kern. He offered better terms than competitors-three cents for sheet music and half the mechanical royalty, with quarterly statements rather than biannual ones.
When Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, restaurants with musical entertainment closed, worrying publishers like Edward B. Marks. Yet Marks adapted quickly, recognizing that "the public from 1910 onwards demanded tunes to dance to." While 15,000 licensed saloons closed in New York, 30,000 speakeasies opened, becoming the new dance venues.
Capítulo 10
The Industry's Transformation Continues
Radio transformed the music industry as stations proliferated across America after President Hoover loosened government controls. Radio initially featured live musicians rather than recordings, with many top bands refusing to play on air. Stations couldn't pay musicians since they weren't allowed to carry advertisements, claiming exposure was sufficient compensation. Radio dramatically shortened a hit's lifespan from a year to months, with sheet music sales plummeting from 200,000 to 20,000 per hit. However, radio could create instant hits-Irving Berlin's "All Alone" sold 250,000 copies after just one radio performance by John McCormack.
Publishers realized radio stations were using their songs for free programming and demanded payment through ASCAP. The 1922 Bamberger Department Store case established that playing radio music in commercial settings constituted "performance for profit," allowing ASCAP to collect licensing fees from radio stations nationwide. ASCAP charged stations a blanket fee regardless of which songs were played, distributing money to publishers and songwriters based on their status rather than actual plays.
By 1925, William Boosey invited Louis Dreyfus to London and offered him the position of managing director at Chappell, complete with company shares. Louis accepted, meaning the Dreyfus brothers now controlled the most important music publishing companies on both sides of the Atlantic. The Dreyfus brothers wielded extraordinary power, controlling top publishing companies while holding senior positions in their respective collection societies. They retained talent by paying well, treating writers like family, and backing them even when they made mistakes.
Hollywood revolutionized the music business when studios embraced "talkies" despite initial skepticism. After Al Jolson's success in "The Jazz Singer," Hollywood rapidly produced musical films, first adapting Broadway shows then hiring songwriters to create new material. Studios realized they needed to control music rights and began acquiring publishing companies. Warner Brothers purchased Witmark for $900,000, then following the 1929 stock market crash, acquired Max Dreyfus's empire (including Harms, Chappell-Harms, and T.B. Harms) for $4 million, becoming the world's largest music publisher.
The boom proved short-lived. As the Depression deepened, audiences preferred action over musicals, and studios overproduced mediocre songs. Studios abruptly retreated from music publishing, returning operations to former owners and cutting music staff to minimal levels. By 1931, Hollywood produced just one musical, and songwriting staff across studios plummeted from 143 to 20. Record sales collapsed from 104 million to 6 million, with top-selling records achieving just 40,000 sales compared to 350,000 previously.
