Unfree Masters: Popular Music and the Politics of Work (Refiguring American Music) By Matt Stahl

In Unfree Masters Matt Stahl examines recording artists labor in the music industry as a form of creative work He argues that the widespread perception of singers and musicians as free individuals doing enjoyable and fulfilling work obscures the realities of their occupation Stahl begins by considering the television show American Idol and the rockumentary Dig 2004 tracing how narratives of popular music making in contemporary America highlight musicians negotiations of the limits of autonomy and mobility in creative cultural industrial work. Turning to struggles between recording artists and record companies over the laws that govern their contractual relationships Stahl reveals other tensions and contradictions in this form of work He contends that contract and copyright disputes between musicians and music industry executives as well as media narratives of music making contribute to American socioeconomic discourse and expose basic tensions between the democratic principles of individual autonomy and responsibility and the power of employers to control labor and appropriate its products Stahl maintains that attention to the labor and property issues that he discloses in relation to musicians and the music industry can stimulate insights about the political economic and imaginative challenges currently facing all working people Matt Stahl is Assistant Professor of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario What makes Unfree Masters so significant is the fact that public struggles between musicians and the recording industry play out in less visible ways across all fields of employment This is not simply a work of popular music studies It is a major critique of the dominant relations between labor and capital in a postindustrial economy Barry Shank coeditor of The Popular Music Studies Reader Unfree Masters is an informative intellectually engaging book What really impressed me is how much I learned about copyright law recording contracts and music industry labor practices subjects I thought I already knew a great deal about Kembrew McLeod coauthor of Creative License The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling Unfree Masters Popular Music and the Politics of Work Refiguring American Music Tour de force scholarship that expands the bounds of what music scholarship can say about larger socio political structures. Part 1 focuses on representations of musical labor and autonomy through the examples of American Idol and independent music documentaries Part 2 is where the real meat of the book is and it s also the most difficult to get through if you are used to music books that focus on the notes This book has much broader ambitions 0822353431 .