Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T12:23:24.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The wonderful world of IFPI: music industry rhetoric, the critics and the classical marxist critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Dave Harker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Serious students of popular music and song are rightly curious about the workings of the music business; but when we try to find out about how the industry works, even in terms of economics, we find that virtually all the empirical data comes from internal sources, from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), or from affiliates such as the British Phonographic Industries (BPI) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In other words, we get only those statistics and ‘facts’ which this most secretive of industries wishes us to have; so we will look in vain for detailed production figures, or for sales of individual recordings (unless they are outstandingly successful), or for hard numbers relating to what IFPI calls ‘piracy’ (let alone the information on which the published numbers and projections are based). Similarly, from the individual company accounts of Sony, EMI or BMG, we may find numbers relating to pension and investment funds, but we will never find the real profits or losses of any company, let alone the rate of exploitation of any artist (or manufacturing or distributive worker); and in any case it is well-known that the published ‘bottom-line’ on a balance sheet is, at best, an informed opinion.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1997 , pp. 45 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boggs, C. 1976. Gramsci's Marxism (London)Google Scholar
Breen, M. 1994. ‘Editor's introduction’, Popular Music, 13/3, pp. 239–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callinicos, A. 1983. The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (London)Google Scholar
Callinicos, A. 1991a. The Revenge of History. Marxism and the East European Revolutions (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Callinicos, A. 1991b. ‘The end of nationalism?’, International Socialism, 2/51, pp. 57–69Google Scholar
Callinicos, A. et al. 1994. Marxism and the New Imperialism (London)Google Scholar
Chapple, S., and Garofalo, R. 1977. Rock ‘n’ Roll is here to Pay. The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago)Google Scholar
Cliff, T. 1988. State Capitalism in Russia (London)Google Scholar
Eagleton, T. 1983. Literary Theory. An Introduction (Oxford)Google Scholar
Garofalo, R. 1993. ‘Whose world, what beat: the transnational music industry, identity, and cultural imperialism’, The World of Music, 35/2, pp. 16–32Google Scholar
Graham, R. 1988. Stern's Guide to Contemporary African Music (London)Google Scholar
Harker, D. 1980. One for the Money: Politics and Popular Song (London)Google Scholar
Harker, D. 1986. US imperialism and US popular music', unpublished paper given at the American Culture Association/American Popular Culture Association conference, Atlanta, GeorgiaGoogle Scholar
Harker, D. 1992. ‘Still crazy after all these years: what was popular music in the 1960s’, in Cultural Revolution? The Challenge of the Arts in the 1960s, eds Moore-Gilbert, B. and Seed, J. (London)Google Scholar
Harker, D. 1994. ‘Blood on the tracks. Popular music in the 1970s’, in The Arts in the 1970s. Cultural Closure?, ed. Moore-Gilbert, B. (London)Google Scholar
Harker, D. 1996. ‘Taking fun seriously’, Popular Music, 15/1, pp. 108–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harker, D. 1996. Forthcoming. ‘It's a jungle sometimes: the “world” music business in the 1990s’ Harman, C. 1979. How Marxism Works (London)Google Scholar
Harman, C. 1993. ‘Where is capitalism going?’, parts 1 and 2, International Socialism, 2/58, pp. 3–57, and 2/60, pp. 77–136Google Scholar
Harman, C. 1995. Economics of the Madhouse. Capitalism and the Market Today (London)Google Scholar
Harris, N. 1992. National Liberation (London)Google Scholar
Hird, C. 1975. Your Employers' Profits (London)Google Scholar
Hung, M., and Morencos, E.G. (eds) 1990. World Record Sales 1969–1990. A Statistical History of the World Recording Industry (London)Google Scholar
IFPI 1994. 1994. The Recording Industry in Numbers (London)Google Scholar
Karshner, R. 1971. The Music Machine (Los Angeles)Google Scholar
Kidron, M., and Segal, R. 1991. The New State of the World Atlas (London)Google Scholar
Kingston, M. (ed.) 1991. 1991 IFPI Review. The Challenge of the 1990s (London)Google Scholar
Laing, D. 1986. ‘The music industry and the “cultural imperialism” thesis’, Media, Culture and Society, 8, 331–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laing, D. 1993. ‘Copyright and the international music industry’, in Music and Copyright, ed. Frith, Simon (Edinburgh)Google Scholar
Manuel, P. 1993. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (London)Google Scholar
Mitsui, T. 1994. ‘Copyright and music in Japan. A forced grafting and its consequences’, in Music and Copyright, ed. Frith, Simon (Edinburgh)Google Scholar
Negus, K. 1992. Producing Pop. Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry (London)Google Scholar
Opekar, A. (ed.), 1994. Central European Popular Music (Prague)Google Scholar
Sanjek, R. and Sanjek, D. 1991. American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century (New York)Google Scholar
Wallis, R. and Malm, K. 1984. Big Sounds from Small Peoples. The Music Industry in Small Countries (London)Google Scholar
Widgery, D. 1987. ‘Beating Time – a reply to Ian Birchall’, International Socialism, 2/35, pp. 148–57Google Scholar