The Recording Industry, 2d ed.(Book Review)

The Recording Industry. 2d ed. By Geoffrey P. Hull. New York: Routledge, 2004. [xii, 335 p. ISBN 0-415-96803-8. $85.] Index, bibliography, glossary, tables.

The second edition of Geoffrey Hull's book, The Recording Industry, is a well-organized, in-depth, and thorough overview of the industry. Since Hull's forte is copyright and entertainment law, and he is one of the founders of and professors in the Recording Industry Department at Middle Tennessee State University, he is eminently qualified for such an undertaking. Why a second edition?

 
  Within a year of publication of the first edition ... two significant 
  events altered the landscape of the music business. First, two of the 
  major labels, PolyGram and-Universal, merged. That reduced the number 
  of major labels to five and created the largest recording company in 
  the world, Universal Music Group. Second, Congress passed the Digital 
  Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act. These 
  two pieces of legislation, prompted by the growth of the Internet and 
  the increasing importance of copyrights in the international 
  marketplace, marked a new era in the way music and recordings are 
  distributed to consumers. Even as the major record companies and most 
  other segments of the recording industry sought to consolidate to 
  increase market share, there was an explosion of distribution of 
  recordings, both authorized and unauthorized, via the Internet. (p. 
  viii) 

Hull's main goal is to introduce and explain the structure and function of an entire industry to an assumed audience possessing essentially little or no knowledge of it. He achieves this in two ways. First, he approaches the topic from an economic and financial perspective "because the most significant changes have been what would be generally described as economic" (p. ix). By looking at both the economic operation within each major part, or "income stream," of the recording industry and their interrelationships with each other plus the relationship between the recording industry and other media industries, the structural framework becomes clear to the uninitiated audience. Second, he presents many historical facts of interest throughout the text to show how different parts of the industry came into being, developed, and changed over time; it must be said, however, that the chronological focus is always on the industry at present. Although the book is mainly expository in nature, Hull succeeds in keeping the discussion simple but thorough. In addition, certain themes that solidify the picture of the industry at present as well as hint at where it is going are interwoven throughout the book:

* The recording industry is now the dominant force in the music business.

* Technological advances have enhanced the industry's ability to make profits from recordings and songs and made those recordings and songs more accessible to more people.

* Although highly concentrated in four large, multinational firms, the industry continues to serve the public through the development and dissemination of more recordings by more artists than ever before. The public is the beneficiary of this diversity.