I always enjoy making book recommendations. A few months ago I offered up some selections for this fiftieth anniversary of the Grateful Dead.

This month I encourage all of you to check out some recent treatments of the music industry…

Fred Goodman Allen Klein: The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll

Michaelangelo Matos The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America

John Seabrook The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory

Stephen Witt How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy

For a bonus pick, I look back to 1976 for Geoffrey Stokes’ Star-Making Machinery: The Odyssey of an Album, which explores the industry via Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.