Understanding Popular Music Culture

This extensively revised new edition of Understanding Popular Music Culture - featuring new case studies on Taylor Swift, Lorde and One Direction - provides a comprehensive introduction to the production, distribution, consumption and meaning of popular music and the debates that surround popular culture and music.
Reflecting the continued expansion of popular music studies, the changing music industry and the impact of the digital age, Roy Shuker explores key subjects that shape our experience of music, including music production, musicians and stars, musical texts, music video and MTV, audiences and fans, scenes and subcultures and music as political activism and ideology.

This extensively revised and expanded fifth edition of Understanding Popular Music Culture provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the production, distribution, consumption and meaning of popular music, and the debates that surround popular culture and popular music.

Reflecting the continued proliferation of popular music studies, the new music industry in a digital age, and the emergence of new stars, this new edition has been reorganized and extensively updated throughout, making for a more coherent and sequenced coverage of the field. These updates include:

• two new chapters entitled ‘The Real Thing’: Authenticity, covers and the canon and ‘Time Will Pass You By’: Histories and popular memory
• new case studies on artists including The Rolling Stones, Lorde, One Direction and Taylor Swift
• further examples of musical texts, genres, and performers throughout including additional coverage of Electronic Dance Music
• expanded coverage on the importance of the back catalogue and the box set; reality television and the music biopic
• greater attention to the role and impact of the internet and digital developments in relation to production, dissemination, mediation and consumption; including the role of social network sites and streaming services
• each chapter now has its own set of expanded references to facilitate further investigation.

Additional resources for students and teachers can also be found on the companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/shuker), which includes additional case studies, links to relevant websites and a discography of popular music metagenres.