Climbing the charts : what radio airplay tells us about the diffusion of innovation /
Gabriel Rossman.
- xi, 184 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-165) and index.
1. Introduction -- The diffusion of innovation -- The production of culture -- 2. How songs spread -- Record release dates -- Corporate radio -- 3. Buying your way onto the charts -- A history of payola scandals -- The 1950s scandal and the rise of rock and roll -- The 1973 Drugola Scandal -- The Gambino family and "The Network" in the 1980s -- Corporate radio, professionalized payola, and the 2005 Spitzer Investigation -- Suppressing payola -- The robust logic of payola -- 4. Can radio stations break singles? -- The role of "opinion leaders" in diffusion -- The distribution of connection in radio -- Diffusion of pop songs and radio stations -- The role of influentials for endogenous diffusion -- 5. The Dixie Chicks radio boycott -- Corporate censorship -- Social movements -- Genre -- 6. But which chart do you climb? -- Trends in the differentiation of radio formats -- Classification and art -- Crossover -- New genres and formats -- Reggaetón comes to the Mainland -- The development of the "Hurban" format as an artistic and market niche -- 7. The future of the chart -- General lessons of the book for diffusion of innovations -- Particular lessons for diffusion in pop music radio -- Centralization and distribution of decision-making -- The struggle to control publicity -- Structures of salient information -- Genre -- The emerging structure of popular culture industries in the Twenty-first Century.