Rockonomics

A cheerful and illuminating read, full of delicious anecdotes and valuable nuggets. It does what Krueger did best — brings economics to life, and life to economics.

A thought-provoking and enjoyable read.

A key voice on a vast array of economic issues.

The economics of rock, in his hands, is a fascinating subject.

A quiet revolutionary of economics.

In the hands of a less gifted economist, this ambitious attempt to both explain the music business and use it for more didactic purposes could have been clumsy. While Krueger was not a born entertainer like Keith Richards, he harnesses the inherently fascinating nature of music to explain topics that might otherwise lull a reader into drowsiness.

Rockonomics is entertaining, educational and enlightening. Alan Krueger gives us a backstage tour of the music industry — and in doing so, he creates a brilliant metaphor for our entire economy. Highly recommended.

An absolutely brilliant mind. The definition of left and right brain balance!

Krueger has produced something special here. With reference to Lady Gaga, Bono, Dylan, and Springsteen, he tells us a ton about how the modern economy works, and also about the human spirit. Oh, he has something to say about human happiness, too. Brilliant, surprising, and fun -- a bit like rock music itself.

The music biz has been down a twisted path, but Alan Krueger brings it all together in a smart, relatable way. Rockonomics has lessons far beyond the music industry, so fasten your seat belt and come along for the ride.

When it comes to rock and roll, not even the musicians who play your favorite songs know where the money goes, which makes Alan Krueger’s outstanding book Rockonomics all the more essential. Through his accounts of show-business dealings and interviews with artists, Krueger unpacks and explains subjects of maddening complexity—record deals, concert ticket sales, streaming revenues, and much more—with the mind of an economist and the heart of a music lover.

The music business keeps re-inventing itself (from records, to tape, to CDs to streaming) and Alan Krueger covers all the bases. As one former LSE student once sang: ‘its only rock and roll but I like it, like it, yes I do.’ That applies to this book too.

Read this book—whether you are a rock fan or, like me, think the Beatles and Stones were the last good groups. Read it because Alan Krueger makes the subject fun and demonstrates how the workings of this 0.1 percent of the US economy beautifully illustrate upcoming changes in the US and global economies.

If you like music (we learn here it would take six lifetimes just to listen to every song once) and going backstage to see how things work (touring, streaming, scalping) and the stories behind the stories (how Reginald Dwight met Bernie Taupin and became Elton John) – then rock on! Or, in this case, RockOnOmics!

An eye-opening and entertaining read. 

n Alan B Krueger's excellent new book Rockonomics, the late author - a former adviser to Barack Obama - writes about how, as with the regular economy, the top 1 percent of musicians (the likes of Rihanna, Madonna and U2) hoover up the revenue: the top 1 percent now take in more revenue than the bottom 99 percent combined, according to the Pollstar Boxoffice database.

I actually majored in economics in college. A few years later, I bumped into a former classmate who asked me what I was doing. I told him I was handling rock radio promotion for Mercury Records. He said, ‘What a waste of your education.’ I hope he reads Rockonomics, so he'll find out I didn't end up as a total loser.

The book takes readers backstage to show
how the music industry really works -- who
makes money and how much, and how
the economics of the music industry has
undergone a radical transformation during
the past 20 years.