Since the 1990s the cruise industry has become one of the largest employers of musicians in the world. Thousands of professional musicians work on cruise ships daily, entertaining millions of passengers. Cruisicology: The Music Culture of Cruise Ships provides the first in-depth account of the culture and the industrial determinants of cruise ship music. Based on interviews with working musicians and coauthor David Cashman's experience as a cruise ship musician, this book investigates how music is organized and made onboard a cruise ship. David Cashman and Philip Hayward study the working life of musicians, why and how corporate shipping lines include music onboard their vessels, the history of musicians on passenger shipping, and the likely future directions of musical entertainment within the industry. Cashman and Hayward illustrate the positive and negative experience of artists making music every day in confined spaces with close proximity to their audiences.

The relationship between popular music and consumer brands has never been so cosy. Product placement abounds in music videos, popular music provides the soundtrack to countless commercials, social media platforms offer musicians tools for perpetual promotion, and corporate-sponsored competitions lure aspiring musicians to vie for exposure. Activities that once attracted charges of 'selling out' are now considered savvy, or even ordinary, strategies for artists to be heard and make a living. What forces have encouraged musicians to become willing partners of consumer brands? At what cost? And how do changes in popular music culture reflect broader trends of commercialization? Selling Out traces the evolution of 'selling out' debates in popular music culture and considers what might be lost when the boundary between culture and commerce is dismissed as a relic.

Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. "Climbing the Charts" examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations' abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success.

Contrary to the common belief that Clear Channel sees every sparrow that falls, Rossman demonstrates that corporate radio chains neither micromanage the routine decision of when to start playing a new single nor make top-down decisions to blacklist such politically inconvenient artists as the Dixie Chicks. Neither do stations imitate either ordinary peers or the so-called kingmaker radio stations who are wrongly believed to be able to make or break a single. Instead, Rossman shows that hits spread rapidly across radio because they clearly conform to an identifiable style or genre. Radio stations respond to these songs, and major labels put their money behind them through extensive marketing and promotion efforts, including the illegal yet time-honored practice of payoffs known within the industry as payola.

"Climbing the Charts" provides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.

Historic RCA Studio B, Home of 1,000 Hits, is a landmark with a legacy built by some of the most important producers and artists in country and pop music. During a golden window, from 1957 to 1977, approximately 18,000 sessions were recorded within its walls, including more than 200 songs by Elvis Presley. The many hits spread Nashville s reputation as Music City worldwide. Generously illustrated with rare photos from the museum s archives, this book traces the story of RCA Studio B from its birth through the city s striking musical evolution, to its existence today as both working studio and tourist attraction and celebrates a magical, bygone era.

The music industries hinge on entrepreneurship. The recent, rapid convergence of media and the parallel ongoing evolution of music businesses have again seen the focus shift to independent companies and individual entrepreneurs. Opportunities tend not to be advertised in professional music and practically everyone begins on their own: forming a band, starting a record label, running events, or building a website. But it's not an easy territory to navigate or get a handle on. Music Entrepreneurship features an analysis of the changing landscape of the music industries and the value of the entrepreneur within them through a series of focused chapters and case studies. Alongside contributions from key academics across the globe, expert contributors from across the industry highlight successful entrepreneurs and offers practical help to the reader trying to navigate the business. Sectors examined include: The value of the music industries Recorded music Live events Branding in music Artist management Digital distribution

During its eight-year existence, from 1987 to 1995, Sarah Records was a modest underground success and, for the most part, a critical laughingstock in its native England--sneeringly dismissed as the sad, final repository for a fringe style of music (variously referred to as "indie-pop," "C86," "cutie" and "twee") whose moment had passed. Yet now, almost 20 years after its dissolution, Sarah is among the most passionately fetishized record labels of all time. Several of its releases sell for hundreds of dollars; devotees from London to Los Angeles to Tokyo hungrily seek out any information they can find about its poorly documented history; and countless new bands--some of them made up of people who weren't born when Sarah shut down--claim its bands as a major influence."Popkiss" will be the book that thousands of Sarah fans around the world have been waiting for. Drawn from dozens of exclusive interviews with members of the 30-plus bands that called the label home, as well as Sarah co-founders Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd, it will offer--for the first time anywhere--a deeply detailed account of the label's occasional triumphs and many tribulations, and its last laugh in posterity. "Popkiss" offers a vivid portrait of something that is likely gone forever: the record label as highly personalized aesthetic statement, whose very name is a trustworthy 'seal of quality' to its acolytes. Following the rise of the Internet and the collapse of the traditional music industry, the uncommonly intimate relationship Sarah engendered with its audience--not only through its music, but through its artwork, self-written fanzines and newsletters, and unorthodox business decisions--is an accomplishment no new label could duplicate today.

This book is suitable for fans of The Social Network, the story of an accidental pirate, a mastermind, and a mogul. How Music Got Free is a blistering story of obsession, music and obscene money. It is a story of visionaries and criminals, tycoons and audiophiles with golden ears. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, and an illegal website six times the size of iTunes. It begins with a small-time thief at a CD-pressing plant, and a groundbreaking invention on the other side of the globe. Then pans from the multi-million-dollar deals of the music industry to the secret recesses of the web; from German audio laboratories to a tiny Polynesian radio station. This is how one man's crime snowballs into an explosive moment in history. How suddenly all the tracks ever recorded could be accessed by anyone, for free. And life became forever entwined with the world online. It is also the story of the music industry - the rise of rap, the death of the album, and how much can rest on the flip of a coin. How an industry ate itself. And how the most successful music release group in history is one you've probably never heard of. How Music Got Free is a thrilling, addictive masterpiece of reportage from Stephen Witt. It's a story that's never been told - but that's written all over your hard drive.

Everyone knows music is big business, but do you really understand how ideas and inspiration become songs, products, downloads, concerts and careers? This textbook presents a full overview of the many elements of the music industries, and offers a sustained focus on 'understanding' the processes that have driven and continue to drive the development of those industries. More than just an expose or how to' guide, this book gives students the tools to make sense of technological change, socio-cultural processes, and the constantly shifting music business environment. The crucial focus on research and analysis means readers can understand and track the ongoing development of the music industries and place themselves in the front line of innovation and entrepreneurship in the future. Packed with case studies, this book: Takes the reader on a journey from Glastonbury and the X-Factor to house concerts and crowd-funded releases Demystifies management, publishing and recording contracts, and the world of copyright, intellectual property and music piracy Explains how digital technologies have changed almost all aspects of music making, performing, promotion and consumption Explores all levels of the music industries, from micro- independent businesses to corporate conglomerates Enables students to meet the challenge of the transforming music industries This is the must-have primer for understanding and getting ahead in the music industries. It is essential reading for students of popular music in media studies, sociology and musicology.

This book describes the emergence of DIY punk record labels in the early 1980s. Based on interviews with sixty-one labels, including four in Spain and four in Canada, it describes the social background of those who run these labels. Especially interesting are those operated by dropouts from the middle class. Other respected older labels are often run by people with upper middle-class backgrounds. A third group of labels are operated by working-class and lower middle-class punks who take a serious attitude to the work. Using the ideas of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this book shows how the field of record labels operates. The choice of independent or corporate distribution is a major dilemma. Other tensions are about signing contracts with bands, expecting extensive touring, and using professional promotion. There are often rivalries between big and small labels over bands that have become popular and have to decide whether to move to a more commercial record label. Unlike approaches to punk that consider it as subcultural style, this book breaks new ground by describing punk as a social activity. One of the surprising findings is how many parents actually support their children's participation in the scene. Rather than attempting to define punk as resistance or as commercial culture, this book shows the dilemmas that actual punks struggle with as they attempt to live up to what the scene means for them.

As a record producer and administrator, Peter Andry has worked with many of the 20th century's greatest classical music artists and performers. Through his work with Decca, his years as president of EMI Classics, and his creation and direction of Warner Classics, he has collaborated with high-caliber artists such as Maria Callas, Yehudi Menuhin, and Herbert von Karajan. He associated with them in close quarters through times of work, play, stress, and relaxation. He has admired their talent, dedication, and charisma, as well as coped with their foibles, idiosyncrasies, and egos. In Inside the Recording Studio: Working with Callas, Rostropovich, Domingo, and the Classical Elite, Andry recounts his experiences with these exceptional talents, with whom he worked as a musician, a record producer, and a company executive. Andry presents intimate portraits of brilliant artists-such as Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Sir Thomas Beecham, Otto Klemperer, Sir Simon Rattle, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and Maxim Vengerov-juxtaposed with the dramatic changes occurring in the recording business during this time, a period that began with 78s and saw successively the advent of LPs, stereo sound, quadraphonic sound, audio cassettes, video, CDs, DVDs, and the growing importance of the internet. A foreword by Placido Domingo and more than 30 photos of the artists are included along with a discography of Andry's recordings with the three labels. These memoirs will be fascinating and exciting to anyone interested in the classical music and recording industries.

Can rock n' roll and politics mix? Rock Dogs looks at the impact of government music policies on the Australian music scene, youth culture, and national identity. In the 1980s to early 1990s, rock music in Australia became one of the unlikely targets of the Australian Labor Party's (ALP) cultural policies. Younger ALP politicians and activists were galvanized to create a series of unique initiatives, such as Ausmusic and the Victorian Rock Foundation, which targeted Australian youth through the music industry. The policies, which used techniques adapted from other cultural industries like television and film, were diverse and innovative, but unproven in the music industry. Despite the optimism fueling these cultural policies, various governmental inquiries, increased resistance from major studios, and a growing divide between the needs of the people and the music industry eventually dampened them. Rock Dogs is a candid, observant study of the legacy of these cultural policies and the larger debate over the creation and preservation of a national culture.

Partly because they are objects of such intense adulation by fans, popular musicians remain strangely enigmatic figures, shrouded in mythology. This volume looks beyond the myth and examines the diverse role music makers have had to adopt in order to go about their work: designer, ventriloquist, star, delegate of the people. Arguing against that strand in cultural studies which deconstructs all claims for authorship by the individual artist, the author suggests that creativity should be reconceived rather than abandoned. What is needed is a sense of "the radius of creativity" within which musicians work, an approach that takes into account both the embedded collectivism of popular music practice and the institutional power of the music industries. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical positions, as well as examining musical texts from across the history of 20th century pop, this text develops a case for the importance of production in contemporary culture.

Once a thriving body of innovative and fluid music, jazz is now the victim of destructive professional and artistic forces, says Eric Nisenson. Corruption by marketers, appropriation by the mainstream, superficial media portrayal, and sheer lack of skill have all contributed to the demise of this venerable art form. Nisenson persuasively describes how the entire jazz "industry" is controlled by a select cadre with a choke hold on the most vital components of the music. As the listening culture has changed, have spontaneity and improvisation been sacrificed? You can agree or disagree with Nisenson's thesis and arguments, but as "Booklist" says, "his passion is engrossing."