|
Showing 1 - 10 of
10 matches in All Departments
The second edition of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the
Streaming Era sheds light on the way large corporations appropriate
new technology to maintain their market dominance in a capitalist
system. To date, scholars have erroneously argued that digital
music has diminished the power of major record labels. In
iTake-Over, sociologist David Arditi suggests otherwise, adopting a
broader perspective on the entire issue by examining how the
recording industry strengthened copyright laws for their private
ends at the expense of the broader public good. Arditi also
challenges the dominant discourse on digital music distribution,
which assumes that the recording industry has a legitimate claim to
profitability at the expense of a shared culture. Arditi
specifically surveys the actual material effects that digital
distribution has had on the industry. Most notable among these is
how major record labels find themselves in a stronger financial
position today in the music industry than they were before the
launch of Napster, largely because of reduced production and
distribution costs and the steady gain in digital music sales.
Moreover, instead of merely trying to counteract the phenomenon of
digital distribution, the RIAA and the major record labels embraced
and then altered the distribution system.
This edited collection analyzes the role of digital technology in
contemporary society dialectically. While many authors,
journalists, and commentators have argued that the internet and
digital technologies will bring us democracy, equality, and
freedom, digital culture often results in loss of privacy,
misinformation, and exploitation. This collection challenges
celebratory readings of digital technology by suggesting digital
culture's potential is limited because of its fundamental
relationship to oppressive social forces. The Dialectic of Digital
Culture explores ways the digital realm challenges and reproduces
power. The contributors provide innovative case studies of various
phenomenon including #metoo, Etsy, mommy blogs, music streaming,
sustainability, and net neutrality to reveal the reproduction of
neoliberal cultural logics. In seemingly transformative digital
spaces, these essays provide dialectical readings that challenge
dominant narratives about technology and study specific aspects of
digital culture that are often under explored. Check out the blog
for more: http://blog.uta.edu/digitaldialectic
The explosion of services such as Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, Apple
Music, Amazon Prime and YouTube, which allow us to access content
at the click of a button, has turned the norms surrounding cultural
consumption upside down. How has this shift to an apparently
unending supply of content affected the way we consume our
favourite binge-worthy show, blockbuster movie or hot new album
release? Positioning streaming alongside a major shift to
contemporary capitalism, David Arditi demonstrates that streaming
platforms have created an economy where consumers pay more for the
same amount of consumptive time. Encouraging us to look beyond the
seemingly limitless supply of multimedia content, Arditi calls
attention to the underlying dynamics of instant viewing - in which
our access to content depends on any given service's willingness,
and ability, to license it.
Over the past two decades, corporations and venture capitalists
have adjusted business models to change the digital world. As a
result, the global economy has undergone a massive shift, changing
the way we work, consume and pay for things. Under this new
'digital feudalism', we find precarious employment via digital
platforms, we buy goods and services in perpetuity through
subscriptions, and we pay for it all with debt. Digital Feudalism
explores this new moment in capitalism, and how reliant global
economies have become on these processes of consumption, work, and
debt.
iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the Digital Era sheds light
on the way large corporations appropriate new technologies related
to recording and distribution of audio material to maintain their
market dominance in a capitalist system. All too commonly, scholars
have asserted too confidently, how the rise and reign of digital
music has diminished the power of major record labels. In
iTake-Over, music scholar David Arditi argues otherwise, adopting a
broader perspective by examining how the recording industry has
strengthened copyright laws for their corporate ends at the expense
of the broader public good, which has traditionally depended on the
safe harbor of fair use. Arditi also challenges the dominant
discourse over digital music distribution, which has largely
adopted the position that the recording industry has a legitimate
claim to profitability at the detriment of a shared culture.
iTake-Over more specifically surveys the actual material effects
that digital distribution has had on the industry. Most notable
among these is how major record labels find themselves in a
stronger financial position today in the music industry than they
were before the launch of Napster. Arditi contends that this is
largely because of reduced production and distribution costs and
the steady gain in digital music sales. Moreover, instead of merely
trying to counteract the phenomenon of digital distribution, the
RIAA and the major record labels embraced, and then altered, the
distribution system. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the RIAA
lobbied for legislation, built technologies, and waged war in the
courts in order to shape the digital environment for music
distribution. From mp3s to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), from the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) to iTunes, the
major record labels and the RIAA, instead of trying to torpedo the
switch to digital distribution, engineered it to their
benefit-often at the expense of the public interest. Throughout,
Arditi boldly asserts that the sea change to digital music did not
destroy the recording industry. Rather, it stands as a testament to
the recording industry's successful management of this migration to
digital production and distribution. As such, this work should
appeal to musicians and music scholars, political scientists and
sociologists, technologists and audio professionals seeking to
grasp this remarkable change in music production and consumption.
The second edition of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the
Streaming Era sheds light on the way large corporations appropriate
new technology to maintain their market dominance in a capitalist
system. To date, scholars have erroneously argued that digital
music has diminished the power of major record labels. In
iTake-Over, sociologist David Arditi suggests otherwise, adopting a
broader perspective on the entire issue by examining how the
recording industry strengthened copyright laws for their private
ends at the expense of the broader public good. Arditi also
challenges the dominant discourse on digital music distribution,
which assumes that the recording industry has a legitimate claim to
profitability at the expense of a shared culture. Arditi
specifically surveys the actual material effects that digital
distribution has had on the industry. Most notable among these is
how major record labels find themselves in a stronger financial
position today in the music industry than they were before the
launch of Napster, largely because of reduced production and
distribution costs and the steady gain in digital music sales.
Moreover, instead of merely trying to counteract the phenomenon of
digital distribution, the RIAA and the major record labels embraced
and then altered the distribution system.
This edited collection analyzes the role of digital technology in
contemporary society dialectically. While many authors,
journalists, and commentators have argued that the internet and
digital technologies will bring us democracy, equality, and
freedom, digital culture often results in loss of privacy,
misinformation, and exploitation. This collection challenges
celebratory readings of digital technology by suggesting digital
culture's potential is limited because of its fundamental
relationship to oppressive social forces. The Dialectic of Digital
Culture explores ways the digital realm challenges and reproduces
power. The contributors provide innovative case studies of various
phenomenon including #metoo, Etsy, mommy blogs, music streaming,
sustainability, and net neutrality to reveal the reproduction of
neoliberal cultural logics. In seemingly transformative digital
spaces, these essays provide dialectical readings that challenge
dominant narratives about technology and study specific aspects of
digital culture that are often under explored.
Record contracts have been the goal of aspiring musicians, but are
they still important in the era of SoundCloud? Musicians in the
United States still seem to think so, flocking to auditions for The
Voice and Idol brands or paying to perform at record label
showcases in the hopes of landing a deal. The belief that signing a
record contract will almost infallibly lead to some measure of
success- the "ideology of getting signed," as Arditi defines it-is
alive and well. Though streaming, social media, and viral content
have turned the recording industry upside down in one sense, the
record contract and its mythos still persist. Getting Signed
provides a critical analysis of musicians' contract aspirations as
a cultural phenomenon that reproduces modes of power and economic
exploitation, no matter how radical the route to contract. Working
at the intersection of Marxist sociology, cultural sociology,
critical theory, and media studies, Arditi unfolds how the ideology
of getting signed penetrated an industry, created a mythos of
guaranteed success, and persists in an era when power is being
redefined in the light of digital technologies.
Music industry executives have been the main gatekeepers in
determining what music is available to consumers since the advent
of the gramophone. As major record labels have become more highly
consolidated, there has been an increasing concentration of those
who determine what music is available for consumption. With the
development of online music distribution, a gap has formed where
independent artists can distribute their music by bypassing the
costly hard media distribution system. This book explores how the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is used by the
major record labels to limit the access that independent
artists/labels have to consumers through the internet. It argues
that in the process through which the music industry works to
co-opt and commodify genres of music, the music is (de) politicized
to appeal to a larger audience. This study is geared towards those
interested in the music industry, commodification and intellectual
property policies.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R383
R318
Discovery Miles 3 180
|