Hey DJ, don’t stop the music: Institutional work and record pooling practices in the United States’ music industry ~ Muhammet Negiz

Pages 1-22 | Published online: 04 Apr 2017

my new article on institutional work and record pooling practice in the music industry is out! #entaspractice https://t.co/4izdxLJrjO
— Neil Aaron Thompson (@n_a_thompson) 4 Nisan 2017

Heeding calls to generate a creative synthesis between business history and organisation studies, this article analyses the emergence, institutionalisation and digitalisation of record pooling practices through the lens of institutional work. By developing an ‘analytically structured history’, this article contributes to the field of business history by demonstrating the value of practice and boundary work as organising categories. Practice and boundary work capture the continuous, recursive relations between structure and agency when constructing narrative explanations. It also contributes to neo-institutionalist history by demonstrating the embeddedness of institutional work – the everyday motivations and actions to revise practices and boundaries are shown to be intimately shaped by the conditions and affordances of historically-situated technologies.

Keywords: Neo-institutionalist history, practice and boundary work, record pooling, music industry

1. Introduction

One of the music industry’s best-kept secrets is that the practice of record pooling frequently has a greater initial impact on album sales than more well-known promotional outlets, like radio, magazines and videos.11. Negus, Producing Pop.View all notes A record pool practice is the legal distribution of the newest music before its release to live-performing disc jockeys (DJs) who pay a monthly membership fee.22. In general, performing DJs are different than radio DJs in that they do not simply compile recordings for radio, but perform live using an artistic style called ‘turntablism’. Turntablism uses a DJ mixer, an amplifier, speakers, and various other pieces of electronic music equipment to enact various techniques, such as ‘scratching’ and ‘beat juggling’, to create a unique sound by the combining sounds of two separate songs. Moreover, a performing DJ is not the same as a producer of a music track, although there is considerable overlap between the two.View all notes Performing DJs then ‘break’ the new music at parties, concerts and clubs. Once the public has heard and reacted to a new song, the DJ delivers a report that, whether good or bad, helps record companies gauge audience reaction.33. Judy Weinstein (famous record pool director and manager) explained: ‘I got the McFadden and Whitehead record Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now by mistake, in a box of some other records. I thought it was great, brought it to [influential DJ] Larry Levan at the [Paradise] Garage, and said, “You’ve got to hear this.” Then Frankie Crocker [DJ at New York’s WBLS] walked into the club that night, took that record off the turntable, and it became his theme song. That’s how the Record Pool could break a record.’View all notesUsing this information has provided record companies with a rationale for directing their attention to individual markets, thus steering subsequent marketing campaigns.44. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes Record pooling also brings together performing DJs and company representatives, which has played a documented role in the creation of new music genres, such as club, house, hip hop and others.55. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.View all notes Record pooling, by providing DJs with legal access to promotional music from record companies, functions as a cultural intermediary,66. Negus, “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries.”View all notes something that has helped shape both the cultural tastes of music as well as album sales in the US since their creation in 1975.77. Record pooling was recently showcased in the Netflix series The Get Down, an American musical drama set in the South Bronx in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Get_Down View all notes

This article stems from the recent ‘historic turn’, which calls for a creative synthesis between history and organisation studies.88. Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History”; Godfrey et al., “What is Organizational History?”View all notes Proponents argue that syntheses between theory and data will help to develop a deeper, nuanced understanding of social processes as well as working to refine theoretical generalisations.99. MacLean, Harvey, and Clegg, “Conceptualizing Historical.”View all notes Recent conceptual and empirical works suggest that bridges between business history and neo-institutionalist theory will further generate historically-informed theoretical narratives attentive to both disciplines.1010. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”View all notes In particular, Rowlinson et al. call for an analytically structured history – using analytical constructs to search archives and aide the construction of narratives as explanations – by integrating the notion of institutional work, since such a project would be attentive to both actor and structure interactions over time.1111. Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies.”View all notes Institutional work is defined as ‘the purposive action of individuals and organisations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions’.1212. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work,” 215.View all notes As this article demonstrates, institutional work is useful to business historians because it helps to position agency in relation to institutions in a way that avoids depicting actors either as ‘cultural dopes’ trapped by institutional arrangements or as ‘hypermuscular institutional entrepreneurs’.1313. Ibid.View all notes Despite calls for such an integration, one in which history is not merely a context to modify or test theory but acknowledges the historical conditionality of theorising,1414. Godfrey et al., ‘What is Organizational History?View all notes few empirical studies have explored this promising avenue. In response to this omission, this article integrates the notion of institutional work with historiography by accentuating both context sensitivity and institutional conditions through which record pooling practices in the US were formed and maintained. To do so, it draws extensively on historical data and methods to study the emergence, institutionalisation and digitalisation of record pooling practices.1515. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”View all notes

This article contributes to both business history and neo-institutional theory. The first contribution follows calls from business historians the development of neo-institutionalist perspectives of business history, namely for the use of institutional work to guide historiography, and vice versa.1616. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”View all notes The integration of institutional work contributes to business history by organising and analysing historical data to evidence the continuous, recursive relations between structure and agency, while giving primacy to neither institutions nor any one individual. Beyond providing a unique history of record pooling, this article demonstrates the benefits of collective and distributed work across time as a unit of analysis.1717. Lawrence, Leca, and Zilber, “Institutional Work”; Smets, Morris, and Greenwood, “From Practice to Field.”View all notes Thus, institutional work forms an explanatory narrative construction of record pooling from archives, not merely the reconstitution of a narrative.1818. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”View all notes Secondly, this article contributes to neo-institutional theory by refining literature that views decoupling between material objects, e.g. technology, and institutions, as an impetus for institutional work.1919. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”View all notes Historical analyses of record pooling suggest that the gradual decoupling between audio, DJ technologies and institutions resulted in fragmented perceptions of the performance and reliability of record pooling practices. This provided ‘boundary organisations’,2020. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”View all notes a window of opportunity to temporarily and secretively subvert institutions in order to repair them through institutional work. This proposition, however, underscores the idea that institutional maintenance work driven by technology decoupling is dependent upon the unique conditions and affordances of technologies, as well as the subjective perceptions of them.

Section 2 offers a brief outline of neo-institutionalist history and institutional work, which frames this article. Sections 3 and 4 draw on second-hand oral histories, magazines and books to describe the formation of record pool practices and their institutionalisation across the US. Section 5 combines historical textual data with oral histories to examine the institutional work that successfully reformed record pool practices towards digitalisation. The article ends with a discussion of contributions and a conclusion in Sections 6 and 7 respectively.

2. Institutions, organisations and institutional work

Recently, business historians have begun to explore what neo-institutionalist history might look like in the context of management and organisation studies.2121. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies”; Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”View all notes In organisation theory, neo-institutional approaches have traditionally focused on providing strong isomorphic accounts of the processes through which institutions govern the business practices of individuals and organisations within their respective field.2222. Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organisations”; DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited” ; Tolbert and Zucker, “Institutional Sources of Change” ; Ranson, Hinings, and Greenwood, “The Structuring of Organisational Structures” ; I define an organisational field following DiMaggio and Powell as ‘sets of organisations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognised area of institutional life; key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organisations that produce similar services or products’.View all notes This literature defines institutions as:

Social structures that have attained a high degree of resilience. [They] are composed of cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life. Institutions are transmitted by various types of carriers, including symbolic systems, relational systems, routines, and artefacts. Institutions operate at different levels of jurisdiction, from the world system to localized interpersonal relationships. Institutions by definition connote stability but are subject to change processes, both incremental and discontinuous.2323. Scott, Institutions and Organizations, 48.View all notesIn other words, institutions are defined more broadly than political or economic rules of the game, rather they are social conventions that ‘take on rule like status in social thought and action’2424. Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations,” 341.View all notes found everywhere ‘from handshakes to strategic-planning departments’.2525. DiMaggio and Powell, “Introduction,” 9.View all notesWhile institutions are often conceptualised in business history at the societal level, such as regulatory and policy regimes,2626. See Buckley, Cross, and Horn, “Japanese Foreign Direct Investment.”View all notes institutional theorists often research institutions and institutional change at the organisational field level.2727. Such as McGaughey, “Institutional Entrepreneurship”; Recent studies have conceptualised institutions cooperative banking practices in Haiti’s nascent banking field (Cruz et al., 2015 ), harvesting practices in the British Columbia coastal forest industry – Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work” and changing teaching and research practices in universities – Granqvist and Gustafsson, ‘Temporal Institutional Work.” This concentration on institutions at the organisational field level focuses analytical attention on concrete practice and boundary work by interacting individuals and organisation, but does not preclude bringing in broader societal institutions, such as labour market or international banking rules, where they are relevant.View all notes

However, neo-institutional theory has recently been criticised as providing an overly socialised view by suggesting agency is explained solely as a reaction to institutional pressures.2828. DiMaggio, “Interest and Agency”; Hardy and Maguire, “Institutional Entrepreneurship.”View all notes Subsequently, many scholars have called for the explicit incorporation of agency into institutional theory, and the study of how actors pursue their interests in the face of institutions. More recent scholarship has focused on the processes through which actors overcome the problem of embedded agency to influence institutional arrangements.2929. Beckert, “Agency, Entrepreneurs, and Institutional Change”; Greenwood and Suddaby, “Institutional Entrepreneurship”; Hensmans, “Social Movement Organizations”; Garud, Hardy and Maguire, “Institutional Entrepreneurship.”View all notes Here, the study of institutional work specifically aims to shift the focus towards understanding how action affects institutions. Lawrence and Suddaby position institutional work around three key ideas: (1) the awareness, skill and reflexivity of individual and collective actors; (2) an understanding of institutions as constituted in the more and less conscious action of individual and collective actors; and (3) an approach that suggests we cannot step outside of action as practice given that even actions which explicitly aim to change the institutional order occur within sets of institutionalised rules.3030. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutional Work” and “Institutions and Institutional Work.”View all notes Therefore, institutional work highlights the intentional, collaborative actions taken in relation to institutions.

Institutional work scholars have demonstrated that creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions entails two fundamental forms of work – boundary and practice.3131. Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work”; Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”View all notesBoundaries among people and groups give structure to identity, while also acting as ‘tools by which individuals and groups struggle over and come to agree upon definitions of reality’.3232. Lamont and Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries,” 168.View all notes Nevertheless, boundaries often translate into ‘unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities’.3333. Ibid.View all notes This inequality brings boundaries into focus as objects of strategic interest for actors motivated either to work to create, maintain or to disrupt systems of privilege.3434. Gieryn, “Boundary-work.”View all notesBoundary work describes the actions taken by professional members to create, maintain or disrupt boundaries that define cultural categories.3535. Ibid.View all notes Specifically, on one hand, boundary work can be efforts to demarcate and enforce a social boundary that separates it from other domains. Actors can do so by using power to define and police membership to gain authority and control over a group’s activities. On the other, boundary work can consist of framing issues to create openness in the boundary-enforcing political system3636. Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes.”View all notesmobilise resources and alliances to redefine boundaries; and develop new ‘boundary objects’ – artefacts that span cultural categories to facilitate interactions across previously separated groups.3737. Jones, “Finding a Place in History.”View all notes

Practices, however, are shared patterns of activity.3838. Whittington, “The Practice Turn”; Miettinen, Samra-Fredericks and Yanow, “Re-turn to Practice.”View all notes They are given thematic coherence by shared meanings and understandings.3939. Schatzki, “On Organizations as They Happen.”View all notes Where a particular individual’s actions may appear trivial, taken together they have meaning and order because of their common purpose and understanding of how specific activities should be accomplished.4040. Jarzabkowski, “Strategy as Practice”; Nicolini, Practice Theory.View all notes Hence groups define the correctness of a practice and provide ways for members to learn them.4141. Schatzki, “A Primer on Practices” and The Site of the Social.View all notesAnd yet, since practices are reproduced through action, members always have a certain potential to work to change them. Practice work is thus efforts to create, maintain or disrupt practices. In this view, mundane but meaningful actions are potential sites for practices to change, after which, such altered practices may radiate to the level of a field and undermine or maintain its prevailing institutional arrangements.4242. Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”View all notes Finally, boundaries and practices are often interlaced in institutional work, e.g. the creation or maintenance of practice often coincides with the manipulation of boundaries, which, in turn, fosters changes to practices.4343. See Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work.”View all notes

Despite the appeal of institutional work in terms of its balance of structure and agency through boundary and practice work, few business history studies have heeded calls for its use as an analytical construct to inform historiography. On one hand, business history has oft been criticised as insufficiently engaging with theory, leading to problem misrecognition and analytical and interpretive failings.4444. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”View all notes In this respect, business history has much to gain from deeper association with organisation theories, such as neo-institutional theory, whose theoretical insights open up fresh avenues of analysis and interpretation.4545. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”View all notes On the other hand, many history and organisation scholars criticise an orientation towards synchronic analyses that privilege contemporary cross-sectional studies.4646. Roe, Waller and Clegg, Time in Organizational Research.View all notes Thus, engaging more directly with history offers benefits by infusing greater realism and substance into theory, which shines new light on structures, categories, and generalisability that remain underexplored. As MacLean et al. put it, ‘the challenge for historical organisation studies, stated simply, is to integrate history and theory, overcoming the aversion to theory of historians and the neglect of historical processes by organisation theorists’.4747. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical,” 610.View all notes This article attempts to further these aims by integrating neo-institutional theory and business history by employing the notion of institutional work, namely the associated concepts of boundary and practice work, to develop a theory-informed historiography of record pooling.

3. Emergence of record pooling practice (1975 – 1978)

This section analyses the institutional work that New York disco DJs used to: break down boundaries that privileged access of promotional music to ‘radio’ DJs and a limited number of ‘top-tier’ disco DJs; create a new practice, record pooling, that enabled equal access to new music while still benefitting record companies; and build new boundaries to ensure only approved performing DJs obtained promotional music. Table 1 provides an overview of institutional work, explanations and data sources.

Table 1. Institutional work during the emergence of record pooling practice.

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The initial practice of record pooling originated in 1975 in New York City. At the time, six record company companies, who controlled just over 80% of the music market,4848. ABC, CBS, EMI, PolyGram, RA and Warner Communications.View all notesdemarcated DJs into two cultural categories, radio DJs and disco (also called party or club) DJs based on a long-running strategy to sell albums by promoting a selection of superstar artists. Because radio DJs had traditionally a much larger audience, they had been the key conduit for new music promotion, thus receiving most of the record companies’ attention insofar as receiving the vast majority of free promotional records.4949. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes The grass-roots popularity of disco in the 1970s, however, led disco DJs to appeal en masse to record companies in an attempt to also obtain free promotional music. One public relations manager told Melting Pot magazine in January 1975, ‘it’s getting to be too much. We want to service the disco deejays, but who’s a disco deejay?’5050. Melting Pot, “NAAD Members Soon a Must.” 1975, 6–7.View all notes The DJs were equally unhappy. Jackie McCloy, who performed at Penrod’s in East Meadow in New York said, ‘It was getting to be crazy. You would walk into any record company, and you would see maybe a hundred guys in the lobby. They would all be waiting to see the promotions director, and he would only meet up with one or two DJs at a time’.5151. McCloy quoted in Melting Pot, “NAAD Members Soon a Must.” 1975, 6–7.View all notes

Record companies initially dealt with this surge of disco DJs by designing opaque rules for allocating disco DJs into ‘top-tier’ and ‘second-tier’ cultural categories. This meant New York’s most prominent disco DJs generally had no issue obtaining promotional music when they wanted; it was the so-called second-tier DJs who were less fortunate. This unhappy group included Steve D’Acquisto, who was told that promotional music ‘was only for the top DJs, which really irritated me. A caste system was emerging. Instead of us all sharing this music, ten DJs would get a record and forty wouldn’t’.5252. D’Acquisto quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes David Mancuso, a so-called top-tier DJ said, ‘I had never wanted to be on anybody’s special list because that implied that I was better than someone else. When Steve told me what was happening, I thought it sounded like the discrimination was getting worse’.5353. Mancuso quoted in Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.View all notes Conditions deteriorated further when Melting Pot’s February issue published a list of record company addresses, prompting a flood of disco DJs to line up to meet with record company promotional managers. In an attempt to enforce boundaries and control the situation, record companies responded by enacting a strict mid-morning visiting window that provocatively paid no heed to the fact that disco DJs typically worked evening and early morning hours and slept during the day. D’Acquisto stated that ‘they would set the most ridiculous pick-up times that were totally would out-of-sync with our lifestyles’.5454. D’Acquisto quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes Thus, the boundaries between radio and disco DJs, and top and second-tier disco DJs, devised and enforced solely by record companies, meant that access to promotional music was privileged to a select few. This perceived unfairness prompted the idea of pooling records.

To effect change to existing boundaries, institutional work scholars have found boundary work in the form of (re)framing issues creates openness in the boundary-enforcing political system.5555. Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes.”View all notes In these terms, Mancuso and D’Acquisto with fellow DJs such as Richie Kaczor, Joey Palmentieri, and Nicky Siano, first focused on framing a shared sense of purpose using the Mancuso’s famous Prince Street Loft as a space to organise. The Loft – an underground dance party at Mancuso’s residence, which famously gave space to the gay community to dance together without fear of police action – epitomises an early emphasis on social equality:

[The Loft] had more to do with social progress, because you had mixed economical groups. … You had people from all sorts of different backgrounds, cultures, whatever. No matter how much money you had in your pocket … you got the same as anybody else.5656. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.View all notesMeeting at the Loft, the DJs framed their discussion as one of emancipation. D’Acquisto, for instance, recalled that ‘we were such radicals! We thought we were Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin. … Suddenly we were standing up for ourselves’. The group railed against imposition and unfairness of disco DJs being undervalued by record companies in general, and current categories of ‘top’ and ‘second-tier’ disco DJs in particular, arguing that everyone should have equal access to promotional music.

These conversations at the Loft led to practice work to create a shared understanding of the new practice, inscribed in a formal ‘Declaration of Intent’. Mancuso outlined that the DJs should try and form a ‘pool or something … like a car pool where everybody jumps in and gets organised. Every DJ would be treated equally’.5757. Mancuso quoted in Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .View all notes Throughout May 1975, the DJs discussed and agreed that to best facilitate access for everyone would be pooling records, such that record companies should provide members with free promotional records in bulk, members themselves controlling who received which records, and providing timely feedback to record companies, using the Loft as a central point of distribution. At the same time, the DJs used boundary work to create a new boundary object5858. Jones, “Finding a Place.”View all notes – an artefact that establishes a new shared context – to facilitate cross-coordination among so-called ‘second-tier’ DJs and record companies, also being formalised in the ‘Declaration of Intent’. Thus, the Declaration ‘serve[d] as a central point to exchange information about up-coming releases, present releases, and who’s playing what and where’ as well as ‘anyone of us who receives a record or information pertaining to a record will immediately inform the Record Pool of its existence, and begin the process of making the record available to all members of the Pool’.5959. 12th Sun, “Daily Double.” 1975.View all notes The actions and discussions at the Loft, manifest in the Declaration, both clarified the purpose and function of record pooling, notably setting out the procedure for acquiring promotional records and providing feedback, as well as facilitating actions across traditional boundaries. These discussions led to the creation of name for their activities – the New York Record Pool (hereafter called the Pool).

Subsequent to the framing, creating new shared understandings of the practice and the creation of a new boundary object, the DJs engaged in further practice and boundary work through mobilising resources. On the one hand, the DJs needed to market the benefits of record pooling to so-called ‘second-tier’ DJs, as it would be these DJs that would actually carry out record pooling by providing feedback on promotional records. The founding DJs were well-known in the disco DJ community, especially through affiliation with the Loft, making recruitment of ‘second-tier’ DJs relatively straightforward.6060. Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum, “She Was There: The Record Pool Founder on Her Life in Music.” 2016.View all notes On the other hand, they had a more difficult time recruiting ‘top-tier’ disco DJs and record companies to join the Pool. Top-tier DJs were giving as much leeway as possible – Mancuso remembers pitching to them ‘keep your contacts but be a member of the Pool to strengthen the organisation!’6161. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.View all notes Not everyone was enthusiastic. Bob Casey, who had been trying to organise a union to parse out legitimate and illegitimate disco DJs, perceived the Pool as undermining his cause, writing that ‘sorry folks but I’m not quite ready for Communism, Socialism, or Record Pools. I believe in good old American enterprise, freedom of speech, press [sic], and I believe in the right of the individual’.6262. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notesFurthermore, record company promotional managers were sceptical viewing the Pool as undermining their function. Mancuso remembers that ‘a lot of promoter thought they’d lose their jobs through this, because they thought they wouldn’t be needed anymore’ but for the record company accountants ‘it was cheaper to send the records to a central distributor, so the music got out’.6363. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players, 130.View all notes Over the course of May and June 1975, negotiations culminated in Mancuso and D’Acquisto hosting a summit with 25 record companies and 150 DJs at the Loft. Meeting minutes indicate that each DJ and record company signed the ‘Declaration of Intent’, and as reported in Record World, ‘before the meeting was over, in a kind of charged, fund-raising benefit atmosphere, the Pool had gotten verbal commitments for participation from nearly all the record companies present’.6464. Aletti, “Disco File,” Record World 1975, 190.View all notes Each signature brought cheers from the crowd, ‘turning what already felt like a party into a celebration’.6565. Ibid.View all notes

Despite the institutional work to found the first record pooling practice, one difficult condition required by record companies was to re-establish and enforce boundaries to ensure only professional disco DJs gained access to promotional music. In other words, further boundary work was needed to protect autonomy, prestige and control of resources.6666. Gieryn, “Boundary-work”; Suddaby and Greenwood, “Rhetorical Strategies.”View all notes As Mancuso stated:

… the record companies wanted to know that they were servicing working DJs, and they said that it was our responsibility to guarantee their legitimacy. This presented us with a real problem because almost every DJ was working off the books, which made it very difficult to verify that they were actively employed.6767. Mancuso quoted in Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .View all notesMancuso approached his attorney Mel Katz to solve the problem – ‘Mel said we should ask the clubs to write a letter saying that such a DJ was working for them and to sign it with a corporate seal’.6868. Mancuso quoted in Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.View all notes Mancuso and D’Acquisto as well as member DJs visited club owners to explain the purpose and importance of the letter for the Pool, reportedly meeting little resistance – ‘it wasn’t like we were asking an arm and a leg’ remembers Mancuso.6969. Mancuso quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes By acquiring the letters, this arrangement meant second-tier disco DJs could now, often for the first time, work ‘off the books’, receive promotional records and still maintain their independence from the record companies.7070. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.View all notes

Consequently, establishing the new practice of record pooling erased prior discriminating boundaries maintained by record companies, which broadened New York’s disco DJs’ access to promotional music. The Pool gained substantial validation when the influential Village Voice argued late in July that it was New York’s DJs and not the stars, radio or the record companies who drove sales in the growing disco market.7171. Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .View all notes During the remainder of 1975, driven by a modest two-dollar fee, hundreds of disco DJs applied to join the Pool, which increased its members to 183, with hundreds more still applying. And yet, while the founders had a very idealistic vision for starting the Pool, they were criticised early for its unprofessional organisation, with the founders themselves stating they were unable to cope with costs of policing membership, rising application numbers, and distribution costs.7272. Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum, “She Was There: The Record Pool Founder on Her Life in Music.” 2016.View all notes Around Christmas 1977, two years after its founding, the Pool disbanded under the stress felt by being unable to meet popular demand and policing boundaries, eventually leading to recriminations, confusion and arguments.7373. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.View all notes

4. Institutionalisation of record pooling practices (1978–1988)

In this section, I analyse the institutional work undertaken over a 10-year timespan that led to the institutionalisation of record pool practices across the US. Table 2 provides more detail of the institutional work.

Table 2. Institutional work during the institutionalisation of record pooling practice.

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Despite the collapse of the Pool, the practice was seen as a success and within three years of its inception it had been copied in every major city in the America.7474. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.View all notes In 1979, there were an estimated 125 record pools servicing close to 10,000 DJs. This proliferation, however, created new problems. For one, there were now so many pools in the country that few record companies could afford to service them all. Moreover, record companies were still unhappy about enforcement of boundaries leading to some of the pools being viewed as less reputable or not well-run, prompting many complaints from pools around the country that it was difficult to get service.7575. Billboard, “Closer Industry Unity is Attempted by Pocono Pool,” 1978, 71.View all notes Ken Friedman, national promotional director of Salsoul Records, talked about pool credibility: ‘I can’t afford to go around the country to check out every pool for myself and so I can only service the ones that are the most professionally run’.7676. Billboard, “Hot Seat Session Sizzles on Spirited Topic,” 1978, 58.View all notes Ray Caviano, vice president of special projects for TK Records, summed up the companies’ dilemma, ‘right now we service 38 pools around the country, that’s more than any other company. Where do we draw the line?’7777. Ibid.View all notes Polydor’s David Steele summarised feelings for most record company spokesmen when he opened the discussion at a forum by clearly underscoring that companies favoured pools that handled distribution chores efficiently and provided feedback information quickly.7878. Ibid.View all notesFinally, a sluggish 1979 economy led record companies to trim their promotional lists, pressuring record pools to prove they could better run and police themselves.7979. Billboard, “Pool Members Advised to ‘Clean House’ at Conclave,” 1979, 63.View all notes Cosmo Wyatt of the New England Disco DJ Association reiterated, ‘in order for us to keep credibility, we’ve got to help preserve the smaller pools and create a unified force. We’re weak divided, and the record companies know it’.8080. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980.View all notes Nevertheless, by the end of 1982 there were only 63 record pools in the country, servicing roughly half the number of DJs only three years earlier. Thus, despite the popularity of the practice of record pooling, key questions remained regarding whether this was a legitimate and efficient practice, as well as how to ensure boundaries such that only professional DJs obtained promotional music.

Institutional work involves collective action to ensure adherence to rule systems and reproducing existing norms and belief systems that underpin the shared understandings of practices.8181. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work.”View all notes In response to the problems facing record pooling, Judy Weinstein, a former organiser of the Pool, whose new pool ‘For the Record’ had become one of the most prestigious in the country, led a group of pool managers across the country in institutional work to professionalise record pools.8282. Penchansky, “Maturity Brings New Challenges to Flourishing Dance Industry,” Billboard, March 1979, 76; Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum (2016), 47.View all notes In 1978, Weinstein engaged in practice work by sponsoring a number of forums – for example, moderating the ‘Record Pools and Their Functions’ session at Billboard Magazine’s International Disco Forums – that brought together a broad cross section of industry executives and record pools.8383. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980, 76.View all notesThese forums created an ongoing dialogue aimed at strengthening and legitimating the existing norms and belief systems of pools in particular and the industry in general. These forums eventually led to the formation of the National Association of Record Pools which in 1978 consisted of approximately 120 record pools nation-wide. The purpose of the Association was ‘to serve as a credible source of information to all trade magazines’ as well as providing the space to strengthen shared understanding, reproduce norms and beliefs, and improve record pooling practices.8484. Penchansky, “Maturity Brings New Challenges to Flourishing Dance Industry,” Billboard, March 1979, 76.View all notes

In particular, Weinstein and others used the forums to urge collective practice work by outlining and pursuing methods for professionalism through new techniques and technologies that formalised distribution, feedback and membership. Scott Tuchman of the Southwest Record Pool campaigned for closer relationships with record companies: ‘You have to get records that are hot on the dance floor on to the air waves and into the retail outlets’ because ‘no record executive is going to ignore a pool that can convert floor play into sales’.8585. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980, 47.View all notes Bob Pantano of the POPS Record Pool specifically instigated practice work by developing and installing a policy where all record pools would hold weekly meetings in order to coordinate DJ feedback, provide companies with accurate and up to date information, and set limits on the number of disks in its circulation.8686. Billboard, “Pool Members Advised to ‘Clean House’ at Conclave,” 1979, 76.View all notes Jackie McCloy, head of Long Island Record Pool, promoted practice work towards routinising feedback systems ‘aimed at better informing record companies on the status of their products after they are shipped to the pools’.8787. McCloy quoted in “Discos Move Ahead to Changing Beat,” Billboard1979, 13.View all notes Pocono Record Pool copied McCloy’s system and took steps to build an improved incentive programme for its more than 50 members. It rewarded them for punctuality in attending pool meetings, accurately and promptly returning feedback and 15 record reports monthly, and promptly paying dues.8888. Billboard, “Discos Move Ahead to Changing Beat,” 1979, 13.View all notes In Atlanta, the Dixie Dance Kings Record Pool engaged in practice work by instituting a computerised system to run its operation. According to Dan Miller, president of the pool, the computer tracked the operation’s 100 members and ensured that they supplied feedback critical to the record companies.8989. Radcliffe, “Pool Service Closer Ties to Company Promotion,” Billboard 1982, 56.View all notes

In efforts to refine and legitimate boundaries, Weinstein stressed record pools keep their focus on equality: ‘All the DJs in For The Record are equal. There are no stars. There are no politics in this pool’.9090. Billboard, “Positive Voice: Judy Weinstein,” 1980, 59.View all notes On the other hand, Jackie McCloy among others engaged in boundary work during forums in an effort to educate record pools on how to effectively let record companies know about their members: ‘We try to tell the record companies that the DJs in our pool are all professionals’ by providing multiple proofs of employment. By requiring more evidence of a professional employment, combined with record companies’ demands for such evidence, pools across the country collectively refined the boundaries of membership. Finally, other pools, such as San Francisco’s Bay Area Disco DJ Association, simply reduced member numbers by redrawing boundaries to service only ‘head DJs’ at their clubs.

Accordingly, this institutional work – taking the forms of practice work as efforts to reinforce shared understandings and norms, and boundary work as efforts to reinforce boundaries – ensured record pools continued viability, establishing them as a legitimate intermediary in the music industry.9191. Ibid.View all notes Looking forward, a move towards CDs in the 1990s only lowered costs for record companies, increasing the membership base of record pools (although it did not replace vinyl records as the main medium for DJs). Resultantly, record pooling continued to be influential throughout the 1990s and is particularly attributed with helping popularise hip hop music.9292. Katz, Groove Music.View all notes A lack of controversy and a general disappearance in trade magazines and newspapers suggests that these practices became institutionalised, i.e. they became taken-for-granted and rule-like in the industry.9393. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.View all notes

5. Digitising record pooling practices through institutional work (2006–2010)

A core conceptual strength of institutional work is that it draws attention to the fact that even society’s most ingrained institutions need maintenance to remain relevant and effective over time. In particular, institutional work theorists argue that material objects, e.g. technology, and institutions have a complex relationship with each other, with their gradual decoupling requiring interrelated practice and boundary work.9494. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”View all notes In the early 2000s, institutionalised record pooling practices began to slowly unravel. Record companies remained deeply sceptical over new digital audio formats, choosing to maintain control by promoting vinyl and CD formats, limiting connectivity of peer-to-peer networks, and lobbying for new copyright protections.9595. Wikström, The Music Industry.View all notes Meanwhile, so-called digital DJs, whose uptake of digital DJ platforms in 2006 – a technology that allowed DJs to mimic a vinyl platform’s ability cue, beat-match, ‘scratch’ and mix music9696. Peck, “Out of the Groove.” Cueing involves preparing one record to mix in with another by matching tempo, musical phrasing, or similar musical properties. Beat juggling manipulates two or more sounds using pauses, scratching, backspins, and delays in order to create a unique composition.View all notes using digital audio – found themselves lacking a traditional source of promotional music. In fact, digital DJs were increasingly tied to the trend of piracy: ‘Everybody was on Napster. But in terms of DJs there was still a big disconnection, even with CD DJs. [Digital DJ platforms] really did not bridge the gap’.9797. Interview with XClass.View all notes As a consequence, record pooling practices that traditionally supplied promotional vinyl and CDs to member DJs were becoming irrelevant, seeing member applications decline, pool closures and the disbanding of the National Record Pool Association.9898. Ibid.View all notes In the remainder of this section, I analyse the institutional work by two small groups – DJCity in Los Angeles and Digiwaxx in New York – that paved the way for reform by being the first to digitise record pooling practices. Table 3 provides more detail.

Table 3. Institutional work during the digitalisation of record pooling practice.

CSV Display Table

Between late 1999 and 2005, DJs XClass, Phenom and Quickie9999. I use the DJs’ calling names here as this is their preference.View all notes in Los Angeles and Corey Llewellyn and Drew Edgar in New York worked to maintain record pooling by launching the first digital record pools, called DJCity and Digiwaxx respectively. Neo-institutionalists have argued that practice innovations may arise out from day-to-day work and pressure to ‘get the job done’, which may radiate to the level of a field.100100. Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”View all notes In this sense, rather than wait for the record companies to adapt to digitalisation, the DJs used practice work to create their own digital promotions by ‘ripping’ promotional songs from CDs and vinyl records into digital files.101101. Interview with Corey Llewellyn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuwxABR08w).View all notes Quickie explained that ‘because most of the promos still came on vinyl’, they still had to ‘record it and re-master it ourselves’ and ‘there was a lot of stuff you had to be aware of to create good [DJ] quality. There was no standard at that time’.102102. Interview with Quickie.View all notes Phenom remembers that record companies initially had no idea about this practice work:

They just said ‘we’ve been dealing with record pool for years and years’ and they knew it’s important to get it out to the DJs. … Because their entire focus was on this sinking ship of declining sales [from illegal file sharing networks] … to them a record pool was 0.001% of their concern. They didn’t even know how we worked. 103103. Interview with Phenom.View all notesQuickie clarified that record companies:

… were probably ten times bigger than they are now. So nobody knew what was going on in one department or the other. … we had to make sure we make those [promotions] people happy and their bosses happy. That was all they cared about.104104. Interview with Quickie.View all notesWhen record companies eventually realised the reality of digital music, the DJs approached and worked alongside record companies to help them establish a digital standard for DJ-quality audio. Quickie remembers:

… [companies] started to send out promos digitally. But even then studios would send us MP3s in 128-kBit quality, which is way too low. So sometimes it was a mess. So it was a lot of work trying to get record companies introduce a standard quality that we could work with’.105105. Ibid.View all notesIn addition, both organisations used boundary work by reformatting their existing websites from online sales of vinyl records towards a new boundary object – a digital record pool – that listed downloadable audio files available for member DJs. This boundary object built a new digital environment for record companies and digital DJs to interact, just as the ‘Declaration of Intent’ originally put disco DJs and record companies in conversation.106106. Interview with Corey Llewellyn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuwxABR08w).View all notes A major limitation in current technology, however, was the ability to transfer digital audio files over the Internet through websites. At the time, most audio transfers used email accounts, but storage space was limited making file transfers time-consuming or impossible. A breakthrough occurred when Edgar of Digiwaxx implemented a large-data transfer software as a way to distribute digital music using a website and thereby sidestepping clogged inboxes.107107. Crosley, “Real Talk.”View all notes DJCity and Digiwaxx additionally used practice work to develop web-based data feedback systems into their websites that became closely integrated into promotional departments of record companies. Crafted in the image of vinyl record pools, these websites require participating DJs to answer survey questions for the company’s research in exchange for MP3s.108108. Ibid.View all notes In particular, DJCity and Digiwaxx designed and employed a digital feedback sheet to collect the opinions of their member DJs, compiled into a report. Unlike reports before digitalisation, however, these included a statistical breakdown of DJs’ impression of new music, which would be analysed nationally, regionally or per respondent. These real-time reports of featured artists gave record companies the new and powerful ability to test material before launching a campaign in the mass market.109109. Interviews with Phenom, Quickie and XClass; Crosley, “Real Talk.”View all notes

Finally, Digiwaxx and DJCity used boundary work in order to regain the credibility of record pooling practices with digital DJs and record companies. The first step was to mobilise resources to engage with new digital DJs and encourage them to use a formal pooling service, rather than rely on pirated audio. DJCity did this by engaging in boundary work aimed at building a thriving community of digital DJs by setting up an online chat room, initially featuring themselves, which morphed into a globally popular live DJ show with famous guest DJs. Phenom recalled that:

…after some time, one of the cool DJs from another town moved to LA and wanted to be on the show and we wanted one of the bigger names. So we put one on and his cool friends recognized it. And other cool DJs wanted to be on the show. They all follow each other. So the site went from being a little nerdy site to a cool digital club around the world.Through the show, DJCity worked to communicate to audiences that the value of digital record pools was that they not only provided DJ high-quality promotional digital audio, but that access was prior to release or uptake by major media and peer-to-peer sites.

To build credibility with record companies, the organisations engaged in practice and boundary work by mobilising their prior connections with record companies, and ensuring DJ members were pre-screened by registering their professional information online. DJCity’s working prior relationships with record companies through years of running a traditional record pool demonstrated that they could ‘work with the label’ rather than ‘take their music and not give anything back to them’.110110. Interview with XClass.View all notes Phenom noted that if they had started the company in 2006 as just a digital record pool, ‘it would probably have worked against us. New companies tried to copy us and [record] labels got scared. Then they were way more protective. I think the fact that we had relationships before that happened gave us a huge advantage’.111111. Interview with Phenom.View all notes Quickie clarified that when record companies became aware of digital record pools they started emphasising, ‘accountability … where the mp3s were going was very important’.112112. Ibid.View all notes DJCity and Digiwaxx engaged in boundary work to re-establish boundaries of membership through their efforts to develop a digital subscription system, where member DJs had to provide evidence of being a professional by uploading proof of their exposure, number of live performances and number of radio appearances. This information was not only used to enforce boundaries but gave transparency to record companies, thus creating a sense that they were members of an exclusive club within the industry.113113. Bruno, “Digital Offers New Digital Means.”View all notes

By the end of 2010, digital record pooling grew in popularity globally, with Digiwaxx and DJCity spearheading the transformation. For instance, DJCity and Digiwaxx had negotiated deals with all major record companies to distribute their digital promotional music to DJs.114114. Market Wire, “Digiwaxx Media Partners With Technology Giant Microsoft to Enhance Zune’s Reach to Urban Music Tastemakers,” May 1 2007.View all notes Although numbers of digital record pools are far smaller than traditional vinyl pools, their global reach is much larger. Phenom remembers that:

In the past I was more paying attention to local music and the LA scene. But when it went digital it went across borders and countries. So I had to start paying attention to music around the world; to the UK, to Australia to Latin America. I had to find the local record company reps for promotion and say: hey we have access to influential DJs in America, give me your music and I’ll give you the feedback. And once I started to connect the dots around the planet it went from three or four companies and ten DJs I dealt with to hundreds of companies and thousands of DJs around the world. So it just grew, it exploded.115115. .Interview with Phenom.View all notesWhereas traditional record pools serviced a couple of hundred DJs at most, Digiwaxx and DJCity alone serviced 80,000 digital DJs world-wide.116116. Although the creation of record pooling was heavily influenced by disco as a genre, most digital record pools try to service all the needs of DJs by providing selection of many genres. However, there are variations among them with some having more promotions from country, rock or hip hop.View all notes

6. Discussion

Despite the calls for closer integration of neo-institutionalist theory and business history, few empirical studies synthesise theory and historical data to develop a deeper, nuanced understanding of institutional change. MacLean et al. argue that such an integration requires a two-way interaction between concepts and evidence attentive to both context sensitivity and conceptual authenticity.117117. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”View all notes Organisational history has made gains by promoting historical research as a way to enrich the broad endeavour of neo-institutionalist theory by explicating theoretical accounts of the past that goes beyond the mere use of history as a context to test or build theory. This article elucidates an analytically structured history by analysing the collective practice and boundary work that led to the emergence, institutionalisation and digitalisation of record pooling practices.118118. Godfrey et al., “What is Organizational History?”; Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”View all notes As a result, this article has contributions to both business history and neo-institutional theory.

This article contributes to business history in main two ways. The first is that it demonstrates the usefulness of neo-institutionalist concepts, such as institutional work, for organising and analysing historical data. In business history, institutions are often seen as stable social structures, which downplays the need for continuous work to make them relevant and effective over time. The integration of institutional work also avoids giving analytical priority to individuals or structures by conceptualising their continuous, recursive relations. Therefore, as an analytical structured history, this article breaks with narrative analysis as it subordinates actors and actions to concepts, but uses these concepts to maintain a causal link between institutional work and institutional change whilst still embedding insights in historical context. Second, this article demonstrates that the interplay between two fundamental types of institutional work – practice and boundary work – provides an insightful organising framework. Record pooling emerged to be an institutionalised intermediary practice in the music industry through the collective creation and refinement of the new practice as well as the definition of legitimate boundaries of participation. And yet, rather than extrapolate theory from context, further analyses show that synchrony between technology and institutions strayed with the onslaught of digitalisation, promoting different forms of practice and boundary work to re-establish the legitimacy. Digitalisation itself is shown to be a unique set of socio-material practices that allowed for new interactions between record companies and digital DJs. In turn, this led to a re-establishment of demarcated cultural categories, while articulating new modes of interaction across them. Consequently, this article provides business historians with a much-needed exemplar of the benefits of integrating neo-institutionalism’s notion of institutional work and historiography without prioritising theory over context.

MacLean et al. argue that a synthesis between theory and data not only has added value for historiography, but also seeks to contribute to theory through offering theoretical refinements.119119. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”View all notes Institutional work scholars recognise a complex relationship between material objects, e.g. technology, and institutions, and that a gradual decoupling between them influences performance and reliability. However, relatively few studies theorise corresponding institutional maintenance work, favouring instead cases in which new practices were created or practice innovations led to institutional disruption.120120. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”View all notes This article refines this conversation by pointing out that gradual breakdowns are embedded in historical context, which may result in uneven perceptions of performance and reliability across actors, prompting a fragmented response. A small, but growing, group of digital DJs initially abandoned record pooling, with record companies too concerned with loss of sales from peer-to-peer sharing networks to notice. This uneven perception provided a window of opportunity for DJCity and Digiwaxx to temporarily subvert one aspect of institutionalised record pooling practices in secret, building a large enough digital DJ following and technological knowledge and expertise that eventual re-negotiations with record companies had already achieved a ‘proof of concept’. My data suggests that in order to do this, DJCity and Digiwaxx were effective ‘boundary organisations’ – i.e. multiple connections with different groups – in that they recognised the inevitable growth of digital DJing and digital audio before record companies and other (failing) record pools. This was due to their links with young digital DJs through membership in a DJ Academy and prior links to professional music promotors.121121. O’Mahony and Bechky, “Boundary Organizations.”View all notes As I have shown, the conditions that led to institutional subversion and boundary spanning are, however, intimately linked with the nature of the technologies and technological change in this industry. Accordingly, this proposition underscores the idea that institutional maintenance work driven by technology decoupling is dependent upon the conditions and affordances of technologies, as well as subjective perceptions of them, each situated in historical context.

6.1. Limitations and opportunities for future research

To further integrate neo-institutionalist theory and business history, it is important to reflect and interrogate the historical veracity of claims based on the sources available, to acknowledge that historiography is a sense-making process itself, and outline future research opportunities. Historical data used in this article benefits from prior work by music scholars and cultural historians to document the actions and reflections of key players of the disco-era. First-hand oral histories were particularly insightful for the digitalisation of record pooling, although access to more data, such as emails, meeting minutes or diaries, for a larger set of organisations would be of additional value. Importantly, although this article uses a variety of data sources, each source can be positioned within a broader notion of collective memory, in which authors and actors are themselves engaged in their own processes of collective sense-making. Source data based on second hand interviews, for example, reveals participants describing their experiences, motivations and outcomes of their work to create and sustain record pooling. Trade magazines, such as Billboard Magazine, moreover, are written by journalists very close to the DJ community, often promoting and sharing goals and identities. Other sources of data, such as records of meetings, associations, reports on agreements, and first-hand oral histories are positioned in this historical study as evidence of work, although more fine-grained data would certainly reveal more detailed actions that are not currently visible. Additional evidence could, for instance, come from oral histories or documents originating from record companies, which are under-represented in this article. As such, it is always possible that refined histories could emerge as data by more oral histories or sources become available.

Finally, this article indicates that further integration of historiography and neo-institutional theory provides opportunities for future research. Beyond refining a history of record pooling, a fruitful avenue of research is that which addresses the articulation of recognised constructs, such as institutional work, that both historians and organisation scholars can agree on.122122. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work.”View all notes Further integrating the notion of institutional work, for instance through analyses of longer spans of time or across geographical contexts, suggests future research can develop more historically-informed theoretical narratives to make claims of social transformation which do not rely only on a single actor, institutions or synchronic analyses. Future studies should seek to successfully marry evidence and interpretation of institutional work with specificities of new contexts or revisiting longstanding topics of business history, keeping an open mind for opportunities for both theoretical refinement and alternative histories.

7. Conclusion

This article was motivated by recent calls for a creative synthesis between business history and organisation studies through the integration with neo-institutional theory. By analysing the emergence, institutionalisation and digitalisation of record pooling practices, this article contributes to both business history and neo-institutional theory by demonstrating the value of practice and boundary work as organising categories in that they capture the continuous, recursive relations between structure and agency. Furthermore, this article proposes that a gradual decoupling of technologies and institutions may result in fragmented perceptions of performance and reliability of institutionalised practices, providing boundary organisation proponents a window of opportunity to temporarily and secretively subvert institutions in order to repair them through institutional work. Such a proposition, however, underscores the idea that institutional maintenance work is dependent upon the conditions and affordances of technologies and subjects’ perceptions that are situated in history.

Notes on contributor

Neil Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization Studies in the Department of Management and Organization at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL. His research focuses on the relationships between practice and institutional theories, entrepreneurial dynamics, innovation, and the emergence of new industries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Negus, Producing Pop.

2. In general, performing DJs are different than radio DJs in that they do not simply compile recordings for radio, but perform live using an artistic style called ‘turntablism’. Turntablism uses a DJ mixer, an amplifier, speakers, and various other pieces of electronic music equipment to enact various techniques, such as ‘scratching’ and ‘beat juggling’, to create a unique sound by the combining sounds of two separate songs. Moreover, a performing DJ is not the same as a producer of a music track, although there is considerable overlap between the two.

3. Judy Weinstein (famous record pool director and manager) explained: ‘I got the McFadden and Whitehead record Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now by mistake, in a box of some other records. I thought it was great, brought it to [influential DJ] Larry Levan at the [Paradise] Garage, and said, “You’ve got to hear this.” Then Frankie Crocker [DJ at New York’s WBLS] walked into the club that night, took that record off the turntable, and it became his theme song. That’s how the Record Pool could break a record.’

4. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

5. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.

6. Negus, “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries.”

7. Record pooling was recently showcased in the Netflix series The Get Down, an American musical drama set in the South Bronx in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Get_Down

8. Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History”; Godfrey et al., “What is Organizational History?”

9. MacLean, Harvey, and Clegg, “Conceptualizing Historical.”

10. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”

11. Rowlinson, Hassard, and Decker, “Research Strategies.”

12. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work,” 215.

13. Ibid.

14. Godfrey et al., ‘What is Organizational History?

15. Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”

16. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”

17. Lawrence, Leca, and Zilber, “Institutional Work”; Smets, Morris, and Greenwood, “From Practice to Field.”

18. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”

19. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”

20. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”

21. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies”; Rowlinson and Hassard, “Historical Neo-institutionalism.”

22. Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organisations”; DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited” ; Tolbert and Zucker, “Institutional Sources of Change” ; Ranson, Hinings, and Greenwood, “The Structuring of Organisational Structures” ; I define an organisational field following DiMaggio and Powell as ‘sets of organisations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognised area of institutional life; key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organisations that produce similar services or products’.

23. Scott, Institutions and Organizations, 48.

24. Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations,” 341.

25. DiMaggio and Powell, “Introduction,” 9.

26. See Buckley, Cross, and Horn, “Japanese Foreign Direct Investment.”

27. Such as McGaughey, “Institutional Entrepreneurship”; Recent studies have conceptualised institutions cooperative banking practices in Haiti’s nascent banking field (Cruz et al., 2015 ), harvesting practices in the British Columbia coastal forest industry – Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work” and changing teaching and research practices in universities – Granqvist and Gustafsson, ‘Temporal Institutional Work.” This concentration on institutions at the organisational field level focuses analytical attention on concrete practice and boundary work by interacting individuals and organisation, but does not preclude bringing in broader societal institutions, such as labour market or international banking rules, where they are relevant.

28. DiMaggio, “Interest and Agency”; Hardy and Maguire, “Institutional Entrepreneurship.”

29. Beckert, “Agency, Entrepreneurs, and Institutional Change”; Greenwood and Suddaby, “Institutional Entrepreneurship”; Hensmans, “Social Movement Organizations”; Garud, Hardy and Maguire, “Institutional Entrepreneurship.”

30. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutional Work” and “Institutions and Institutional Work.”

31. Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work”; Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”

32. Lamont and Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries,” 168.

33. Ibid.

34. Gieryn, “Boundary-work.”

35. Ibid.

36. Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes.”

37. Jones, “Finding a Place in History.”

38. Whittington, “The Practice Turn”; Miettinen, Samra-Fredericks and Yanow, “Re-turn to Practice.”

39. Schatzki, “On Organizations as They Happen.”

40. Jarzabkowski, “Strategy as Practice”; Nicolini, Practice Theory.

41. Schatzki, “A Primer on Practices” and The Site of the Social.

42. Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”

43. See Zietsma and Lawrence, “Institutional Work.”

44. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”

45. Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”

46. Roe, Waller and Clegg, Time in Organizational Research.

47. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical,” 610.

48. ABC, CBS, EMI, PolyGram, RA and Warner Communications.

49. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

50. Melting Pot, “NAAD Members Soon a Must.” 1975, 6–7.

51. McCloy quoted in Melting Pot, “NAAD Members Soon a Must.” 1975, 6–7.

52. D’Acquisto quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

53. Mancuso quoted in Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.

54. D’Acquisto quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

55. Benford and Snow, “Framing Processes.”

56. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.

57. Mancuso quoted in Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .

58. Jones, “Finding a Place.”

59. 12th Sun, “Daily Double.” 1975.

60. Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum, “She Was There: The Record Pool Founder on Her Life in Music.” 2016.

61. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.

62. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

63. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players, 130.

64. Aletti, “Disco File,” Record World 1975, 190.

65. Ibid.

66. Gieryn, “Boundary-work”; Suddaby and Greenwood, “Rhetorical Strategies.”

67. Mancuso quoted in Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .

68. Mancuso quoted in Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.

69. Mancuso quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

70. Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players.

71. Szathmary and Truscott, “Inside the Disco Boom,” Village Voice 1975 .

72. Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum, “She Was There: The Record Pool Founder on Her Life in Music.” 2016.

73. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day.

74. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.

75. Billboard, “Closer Industry Unity is Attempted by Pocono Pool,” 1978, 71.

76. Billboard, “Hot Seat Session Sizzles on Spirited Topic,” 1978, 58.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. Billboard, “Pool Members Advised to ‘Clean House’ at Conclave,” 1979, 63.

80. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980.

81. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work.”

82. Penchansky, “Maturity Brings New Challenges to Flourishing Dance Industry,” Billboard, March 1979, 76; Interview with Judy Weinstein, Tantum (2016), 47.

83. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980, 76.

84. Penchansky, “Maturity Brings New Challenges to Flourishing Dance Industry,” Billboard, March 1979, 76.

85. Billboard, “Pools Lacking Unity,” 1980, 47.

86. Billboard, “Pool Members Advised to ‘Clean House’ at Conclave,” 1979, 76.

87. McCloy quoted in “Discos Move Ahead to Changing Beat,” Billboard 1979, 13.

88. Billboard, “Discos Move Ahead to Changing Beat,” 1979, 13.

89. Radcliffe, “Pool Service Closer Ties to Company Promotion,” Billboard 1982, 56.

90. Billboard, “Positive Voice: Judy Weinstein,” 1980, 59.

91. Ibid.

92. Katz, Groove Music.

93. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.

94. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”

95. Wikström, The Music Industry.

96. Peck, “Out of the Groove.” Cueing involves preparing one record to mix in with another by matching tempo, musical phrasing, or similar musical properties. Beat juggling manipulates two or more sounds using pauses, scratching, backspins, and delays in order to create a unique composition.

97. Interview with XClass.

98. Ibid.

99. I use the DJs’ calling names here as this is their preference.

100. Smets et al., “From Practice to Field.”

101. Interview with Corey Llewellyn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuwxABR08w).

102. Interview with Quickie.

103. Interview with Phenom.

104. Interview with Quickie.

105. Ibid.

106. Interview with Corey Llewellyn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuwxABR08w).

107. Crosley, “Real Talk.”

108. Ibid.

109. Interviews with Phenom, Quickie and XClass; Crosley, “Real Talk.”

110. Interview with XClass.

111. Interview with Phenom.

112. Ibid.

113. Bruno, “Digital Offers New Digital Means.”

114. Market Wire, “Digiwaxx Media Partners With Technology Giant Microsoft to Enhance Zune’s Reach to Urban Music Tastemakers,” May 1 2007.

115. .Interview with Phenom.

116. Although the creation of record pooling was heavily influenced by disco as a genre, most digital record pools try to service all the needs of DJs by providing selection of many genres. However, there are variations among them with some having more promotions from country, rock or hip hop.

117. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”

118. Godfrey et al., “What is Organizational History?”; Rowlinson et al., “Research Strategies.”

119. MacLean et al., “Conceptualizing Historical.”

120. Jones and Massa, “From Novel Practice”; Raviola and Norbäck, “Bringing Technology”; Gawer and Phillips, “Institutional Work.”

121. O’Mahony and Bechky, “Boundary Organizations.”

122. Lawrence and Suddaby, “Institutions and Institutional Work.”

References

Barin Cruz, L., N. Aguilar Delgado, B. Leca, and J. P. Gond. “Institutional Resilience in Extreme Operating Environments: The Role of Institutional Work”.” Business & Society 55, no. 7 (2016): 970–1016.10.1177/0007650314567438

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Hey DJ, don’t stop the music: Institutional work and record pooling practices in the United States’ music industry

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