Digital Music Wars: Ownership and Control of the Celestial Jukebox (Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture) - Hardcover

Burkart, Patrick; McCourt, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0742536688 ISBN 13: 9780742536685

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006

Synopsis

With the rising popularity of online music, the nature of the music industry is rapidly changing. Rather than buying albums, tapes, or CDs, music shoppers can purchase just one song at a time. It's akin to putting a coin into a diner jukebox_except the jukebox is out in cyberspace. But has increasing copyright protection gone too far in keeping the music from the masses? The authors show how the online music industry will establish the model for digital distribution, cultural access, and consumer privacy. Digital Music Wars explores the far-reaching implications of downloading music in an in-depth and insightful way.

About this title

Review

This is a fascinating and important study for those concerned about trends in the media industries. The book is theoretically solid and provides excellent detail to the concerns of copyright and technological development that will shape the music industry for decades to come.--Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Colorado

This concise, precise little book is a spirited polemic against digital capitalism and a mine of information about changes in the music business. Everyone interested in the contemporary cultural industries should read it.--David Hesmondhalgh, The Open University, the United Kingdom

Burkart and McCourt provide the first clear and comprehensive account of the Internet's impact on the music industry. From law to mp3s, peer-to-peer networks to DRM, their telling of the modern music industry's storied struggle with technology is always engaging, illuminating, and insightful. For students and scholars alike this book will prove invaluable to an understanding of the complicated legal, technological, commercial, and social issues surrounding today's digital music mayhem.--Steve Jones, University of Illinois, Chicago; author, Virtual Culture, Rock Formation: Technology, Music, and Mass Communication

Digital Music Wars should be required reading for anyone interested in the rapidly changing legal and technological landscape that was carved out after World War MP3. Although it deftly explains these shifts to both novices and experts, the book's real strength is in illuminating what is at stake in these battles: the public interest.--Kembrew McLeod, author, Freedom of Expression and Owning Culture

Digital Music Wars provides an essential roadmap to the massive upheaval in the global music business. With a critical eye and the clearest prose, it examines the changing technologies, corporate struggles, government responses, and citizen challenges that are creating the emerging 'celestial jukebox.' Skillfully combining political, economic, and cultural approaches, the authors have written a book that is both comprehensive and a joy to read.--Vincent Mosco, Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society, Queen's University

Burkart and McCourt weave together materials from disparate sources to provide a comprehensive and clarifying account of the technological, business, and legal developments in a complex and confusing industry. They also alert us to the historical context within which the current drama is playing out. The end result is a book that is both cutting edge and historically grounded--a rare and welcome feat.--Harmeet Sawhney, Indiana University; editor, The Information Society

. . . provides a good survey of the global music business and the technology-driven upheavals that have so changed it in recent years.--Communication Booknotes Quarterly

About the Author

Patrick Burkart is assistant professor of communication at Texas A&M University. Tom McCourt is assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University and the author of Conflicting Communication Interests in America: The Case of National Public Radio.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0742536688
• ISBN 13: 9780742536685
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176