Audiobook10 hours
Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, From Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince
Written by Peter Ames Carlin
Narrated by David de Vries
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
The most compelling figures in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs who were the first in the music business to read the generational writing on the wall in the mid-1960s. By recruiting outsider artists and allowing them to make the music they wanted, Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company into the voice of a generation. Along the way, they revolutionized the music industry and, within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the history of the American music industry.
Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His offbeat crew reinvented the way business was done, giving their artists free rein while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising, promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for in-house weirdness, the upstarts' experiments and innovations paid off, to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums.
It may sound like a fairy tale, but once upon a time Warner Bros Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring, pure entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money.
Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His offbeat crew reinvented the way business was done, giving their artists free rein while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising, promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for in-house weirdness, the upstarts' experiments and innovations paid off, to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums.
It may sound like a fairy tale, but once upon a time Warner Bros Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring, pure entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money.
Author
Peter Ames Carlin
Peter Ames Carlin has been a senior writer for People, a TV critic for The Oregonian newspaper, and is the author of Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney: A Life. Carlin lives with his wife and three children in Portland, Oregon. Visit PeterAmesCarlin.com.
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Reviews for Sonic Boom
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Within the first chapter I realize this is not for me.
Recommend for a history buff.