New Book On Music Market Contestability From Global Publisher Palgrave Macmillan: The Pop Music Idol And The Spirit Of Charisma

Trajce Cvetkovski makes a case for the synergetic union between reality TV and the music industry. The author delves into technological change in popular music, and the role of music reality TV and social media in the pop production process. He challenges the current scholarship which does not adequately distinguish the economic significance of these developments.

The Pop Music Idol and the Spirit of Charisma is concerned with the political economy of the music industry. The sale of recorded music resides in a contestable digital landscape as the centralised industry organisational model is no longer viable. This century of streaming, downloading and social networking is vastly different to the previous century where the only formats on offer were provided by the music majors along with a strict set of terms. In this decentralised environment, the majors have desperately set out to seek commercial synergies as emerging technologies bring new threats. One of the positive outcomes for the majors in this shake-up has been the union with music reality TV. Music contests such as Idol, X Factor, and The Voice have become the rainmaking dream machines in a pop cultural marketplace. The majors have, for the time being, a successful business model for re-organisation. This book is a call for further examination of this specialised form of reality TV.

Source: Palgrave