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How the Mafia Built the Music Industry: Jukeboxes, Radio & the Mob's Secret Grip on America | Sleep Story
Long before streaming charts and radio consultants, the mob decided what America listened to. Tonight's story follows organized crime's fifty-year grip on American music. From Prohibition-era speakeasies and the Cotton Club, through the territorial "jukebox wars" that controlled which songs got heard, into the payola scandal that destroyed DJ Alan Freed, through record executive Morris Levy's mob-financed Roulette Records empire, and finally into the counterfeit-record rackets that closed out the era. Narrated slowly over gentle rain sounds and designed to help you fall asleep, this…
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