Independence in 21st-Century Popular Music

Can music be made “independently” in the 21st century? More than a generation of musicians, music workers, and music companies have now been operating in the context of the profound shifts in music production and dissemination in the “digital era.” Scholarly focus on musical independence has often been centered on genres, like punk and indie, rooted in the US and UK. This volume, focused outside the Euro-American context, shows the variety of ways musicians, music workers and businesses manage the economic, media and cultural shifts propelled by digitalization, asking what it means now to say one is “independent.” It brings together scholars from around the globe who are researching forms of music production, circulation, consumption and finance that blur the boundaries between the dominant corporate players and “independent” cultural production. With chapters detailing popular music in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Indonesia, Portugal, Spain and Taiwan, independence is shown to be a concept and practice simultaneously nebulous, contradictory, and practical.
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