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When I was a young boy, first falling in love with rock and roll music, the only messages I wanted to hear were on commercial radio and television. Today, there have never been as many available pathways to getting your message out to your audience, particularly the focused merchandising highways facilitated by social media platforms.

What do Def Leppard, Prince, The Everly Brothers, and Taylor Smith have in common? Would it surprise you to know that these singers either re-recorded earlier song catalogs to gain control, or threatened to do so as a negotiating strategy and to exert control over their masters?

Eminem is arguably among the best and most successful rappers in rock and roll, still on an incredible career trajectory that excites and provokes, constituting an important body of work. But he is also among the most litigious entertainers, both giving it out and taking it in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases.

Charles Manson’s life and death occasioned several interesting legal issues. Quentin Tarantino’s fascinating Manson movie also reveals the role of rock music in the history of his cultish Manson Family. He wrote a song appropriated by The Beach Boys, and released one album with 14 songs, half of them unbelievably covered by other singers, making it perhaps the creepiest album provenance of any other rock album.

Another in a series of topics related to the law and business of the music industry, as discussed in the book, "Rockonomics." This show focuses upon issues of merchandizing.

This show highlights the rise of movies across many platforms, going behind the scenes on legal topics related to music and musicians.

When the pandemic began, music and performance legal issues were among the most complex, across the board.

How is one of the most-discussed songs in rap and hip hop not being made available for anyone else’s use? This show reviews the law of putting music “on hold.”

As in every election cycle, entertainers want to exert better control over their music being used by politicians running for office, but there are few points of control they can exert.

The BLM movement has had a great effect upon politics and upon the music industry, and will continue to do so.