Now in its fifth edition, this popular A–Z student reference book provides a comprehensive survey of key ideas and concepts in popular music culture, examining the social and cultural aspects of popular music. Fully revised with extended coverage of the music industries, sociological concepts and additional references to reading, listening and viewing throughout, the new edition expands on the foundations of popular music culture, tracing the impact of digital technology and changes in the way in which music is created, manufactured, marketed and consumed. The concept of metagenres remains a central part of the book: these are historically, socially, and geographically situated umbrella musical categories, each embracing a wide range of associated genres and subgenres. New or expanded entries include: Charts, Digital music culture, Country music, Education, Ethnicity, Race, Gender, Grime, Heritage, History, Indie, Synth pop, Policy, Punk rock and Streaming. Popular Music Culture: The Key Concepts is an essential reference tool for students studying the social and cultural dimensions of popular music.

That rare thing, an academic study of music that seeks to tie together the strands of the musical text, the industry that produces it, and the audience that gives it meaning... A vital read for anyone interested in the changing nature of popular music production and consumption" - Dr Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, The University of Northampton Popular music entertains, inspires and even empowers, but where did it come from, how is it made, what does it mean, and how does it eventually reach our ears? Tim Wall guides students through the many ways we can analyse music and the music industries, highlighting crucial skills and useful research tips. Taking into account recent changes and developments in the industry, this book outlines the key concepts, offers fresh perspectives and encourages readers to reflect on their own work. Written with clarity, flair and enthusiasm, it covers: Histories of popular music, their traditions and cultural, social, economic and technical factors Industries and institutions, production, new technology, and the entertainment media Musical form, meaning and representation Audiences and consumption. Students′ learning is consolidated through a set of insightful case studies, engaging activities and helpful suggestions for further reading.

Focusing on the variety of genres that make up pop music, Roy Shuker explores key subjects which shape our experience of music such as music production, the music industry, music policy, fans, audiences and subcultures.

How is popular music culture connected with the life, image, and identity of a city? How, for example, did the Beatles emerge in Liverpool, how did they come to be categorized as part of Liverpool culture and identity and used to develop and promote the city, and how have connections between the Beatles and Liverpool been forged and contested? This book explores the relationship between popular music and the city using Liverpool as a case study. Firstly, it examines the impact of social and economic change within that city on its popular music culture, focusing on de-industrialization and economic restructuring during the 1980s and 1990s. Secondly, and in turn, it considers the specificity of popular music culture and the many diverse ways in which it influences city life and informs the way that the city is thought about, valued and experienced. Cohen highlights popular music's unique role and significance in the making of cities, and illustrates how de-industrialization encouraged efforts to connect popular music to the city, to categorize, claim and promote it as local culture, and harness and mobilize it as a local resource. In doing so she adopts an approach that recognizes music as a social and symbolic practice encompassing a diversity of roles and characteristics: music as a culture or way of life distinguished by social and ideological conventions; music as sound; speech and discourse about music; and music as a commodity and industry.

This book explores the trend of retro and nostalgia within contemporary popular music culture. Using empirical evidence obtained from a case study of fans’ engagement with older music, the book argues that retro culture is the result of an inseparable mix of cultural and technological changes, namely, the rise of a new generation and cultural mood along with the encouragement of new technologies. Retro culture has become a hot topic in recent years but this is the first time the subject has been explored from an academic perspective and from the fans’ perspective. As such, this book promises to provide concrete answers about why retro culture dominates in contemporary society. For the first time ever, this book provides an empirically grounded theory of popular music, retro culture and its intergenerational audience in the twenty-first century. It will appeal to advanced students of popular music studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology and music.

In contrast to many books on Islam that focus on political rhetoric and activism, this book explores Islam's extraordinarily rich cultural and artistic diversity, showing how sound, music and bodily performance offer a window onto the subtleties and humanity of Islamic religious experience. Through a wide range of case studies from West Asia, South Asia and North Africa and their diasporas - including studies of Sufi chanting in Egypt and Morocco, dance in Afghanistan, and "Muslim punk" on-line - the book demonstrates how Islam should not be conceived of as being monolithic or monocultural, how there is a large disagreement within Islam as to how music and performance should be approached, such disagreements being closely related to debates about orthodoxy, secularism, and moderate and fundamental Islam, and how important cultural activities have been, and continue to be, for the formation of Muslim identity.

This book explores how the rise of widely available digital technology impacts the way music is produced, distributed, promoted, and consumed, with a specific focus on the changing relationship between artists and audiences. Through in-depth interviewing, focus group interviewing, and discourse analysis, this study demonstrates how digital technology has created a closer, more collaborative, fluid, and multidimensional relationship between artist and audience. Artists and audiences are simultaneously engaged with music through technology—and technology through music—while negotiating personal and social aspects of their musical lives. In light of consistent, active engagement, rising co-production, and collaborative community experience, this book argues we might do better to think of the audience as accomplices to the artist.

The purpose of this book of essays is to provide a novel sort of introduction to music. Struck by the fact that most introductions to the art are oriented toward an historical approach or, on the other hand, cover the field of music systematically by giving attention to selected parameters such as melody, rhythm, and harmony, or to genres of music such as symphony, opera, and song, the authors were impressed by the attractiveness of an approach that focuses on music in the contemporary world, and particularly on the way in which it interacts with those social, political, and cultural processes that distinguish the twentieth century. The authors have attempted to produce a group of original essays, each of which is devoted to an approach to the study of music and musical culture, and which has one repertory or culture as its main topic of discussion. The authors view the contemporary world as consisting of the industrialized nations of the West and the developing countries of the Third World; they include among contemporary musics all sorts of musical styles that have come into existence in the twentieth century, whether their background is part and parcel of the twentieth century or whether it is to be ultimately sought in the distant past. The authors feel also that the reader will be interested in musics of the educated and elite as well as those of the broad masses of urban and rural population.

Since the Second World War, Europe has undergone a continual invasion: wave after wave of American popular culture. The diffusion of American culture in Europe is both a European story about America and an American story about Europe. This work examines this cross-cultural phenomenon from the European viewpoint. Nearly two dozen European experts in their respective fields offer an invigorating, engaging, and open-minded examination of America as perceived with the acute insight of the interested European outsider—a fruitful tradition that stretches back to Lafayette, de Tocqueville, and Goethe, to name three. Of interest to scholars, students, and general readers alike. The book's focus is both sensuous and intellectual: how America is seen (The Image); heard (Popular Music); perused (The Written Word); digested (Food); learned from its common ways (Social Customs); perceived by minorities (Ethnic Cultures); and taken as an instrument of change (Americanization). It is the first book of its kind published in the United States. It is rich with selected, up-to-date critical bibliographies in areas for which very little information is otherwise available. In sum: a cogent, cross-cultural analysis of how U.S. popular culture exposes both European dreams of well-being and nightmares of discontent. These are insights which deserve to be savored.