Abstract
Rarely do we read insider accounts of the cultural industries with the insight, eloquence and critical acumen displayed in this important book. Drawing on 16 years’ experience in the music industry, where he also gained knowledge of the film and theatre industries before moving into publishing, Jonathan Wheeldon provides a surefooted guide to the various lines of debates that continue to rattle and hum around the question of copyright. This question remains up in the air and shows little sign of being resolved. Wheeldon examines the discursive tactics deployed by the various sides of the debate and argues that the industrial world is organized and evolves more through narrative plausibility than strategic precision. The key players here – the patron, the inventor, the curator and the intellectual property ‘thief’ – construct alternative narratives that either promote or (more often) obstruct opportunities for social and industrial change. The book seeks at least to loosen the deadlock that has grown around copyright reform. It begins with the recorded music industry before moving on to present a range of different voices and views in the industry, taking into account such developments as the rise of the Internet, digital compression technologies and peer-to-peer file-sharing. Wheeldon then employs discourse analysis to focus critically on the various narratives in play, before concluding the book with a wide-ranging discussion of copyright reform, arguably the most critical issue currently facing the music industry and the cultural economy more broadly. Here, the pirate’s tale figures prominently. Altogether, this is a compelling stretch of analysis sustained over 15 weighty – yet variously written – chapters, and anyone interested in how the cultural industries have changed in the early 21st century, along with the challenges thus raised, should read this book.