This book addresses a fundamental question: how have changes in capitalism impacted the production and consumption of music? In the first chapter, Taylor (UCLA) offers a brief history of music and capitalism, and in the chapters that follow, he looks at neoliberalism and the cultural industries, globalization, digitalization, and neoliberal capitalism. . . . In contrast to many social scientists who critique present-day society, Taylor is mildly optimistic: he concludes that humans have the potential for better lives. Of interest to those in the culture industries. . . . Recommended.
Choice Taylor convincingly argues we can't properly look at music in a vacuum that doesn't consider economics, and provides a framework for understanding the big pictures and unseen hands driving the industry and the people who work within it.
PopMatters Using a historically informed approach grounded in Marx, Weber and Bourdieu, Taylor's book is wide ranging but focused, nuanced and clearly articulated.
Ethnomusicology Forum First-hand accounts from Taylor's interviews tie together the wide-ranging topics throughout, revealing how each individual or organization negotiates their own position in the economy and builds their own identity in the cultural value system of the music business. . . . Music And Capitalism builds on the argument put forward by Jacques Attali in Noise: The Political Economy Of Music that capitalism both shapes and is shaped by culture. This approach necessarily invokes systems of value other than the monetary
brand value, edginess, tastemaking, and the construction of identity through conspicuous consumption are discussed. Yet in Taylor's view of capitalism as a cultural force, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between aesthetic judgments and marketing decisions.
The Wire