Rockin' Out provides a comprehensive social history of popular music in the United States from the heyday of Tin Pan Alley to the current sounds of electronic dance music and teen pop, from the invention of the phonograph to the promise of the Internet. It offers an analysis and critique of the music itself and the conditions of its production and consumption. The book is organized chronologically and thematically around particular genres/styles of music and addresses such dimensions as race, class, gender, ethnicity, technology, copyright and the structure of the music industry as they affect the development of the music. The author examines the Tin Pan Alley era, mass media and the construction of race, the rise of rhythm and blues, the eruption of rock 'n' roll, the reaction to rock 'n' roll, the sixties, fragmentation of pop, the poles of pop, the eighties, youth culture and censorship, packaging pop for the new millennium and the future of music. For music fans and historians.