In Rockonomics you will discover how Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra cut themselves in for songwriting credit as payment for agreeing to record a tune; the inside story of Dick Clark and Alan Freed, whose business practices were notably similar, but who came out of the payola scandal with careers heading in opposite directions; why, on his first three albums, Bruce Springsteen received nine cents an album to his manager's thirty-six cents; updates on the Beatles $80 million lawsuit, and new lawsuits since this book's original publication, including Billy Joel's; plus, the phenomenon of rap, the death of Bill Graham, the new "political correctness" of rock, a financial report on the state of the business through the first third of the nineties, and much more.