First published in 2003, this new edition has been updated to take into account the changes and developments that have occurred in both the music industry and scholarship over the last 10 years. The book is sub divided into four parts, which broadly investigate questions associated with the histories of popular music, its industries and institutions, analysis techniques and finally forms of consumption.

Part 1 is divided into four chapters, with the generic aim of assisting readers in critically engaging with written and visual narratives of popular music histories. Most importantly, Wall encourages a critique of the reasons why certain historical events are often highlighted over others, resulting in the many ‘totalised’ accounts of music history we read and view today. Wall highlights the tendency of musical histories to focus on one of three narratives: disruption (where radically different styles ‘take over’ from older ones); mainstream vs. alternative, and musical influences, all of which are seen as having the potential to result in authors making the history comply with preconceived accounts – regardless of evidence.

Part 2 comprises three chapters (5–7), collectively entitled ‘Industries and institutions’. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the various ‘layers’ of popular music production. Here Wall skilfully differentiates between the ‘record’, ‘music’ and ‘entertainment’ industries, facilitating the reader's appreciation of how they overlap and resonate with each other. Wall highlights the economic necessity for these organisations to focus on promoting a narrow range of genre-specific ‘stars’ to multiple geographic territories – a process which ultimately restricts the choice of music available. This of course has been circumnavigated to a certain extent by the use of the internet – which Wall deals with in a later chapter.

Chapters 6 and 7 provide an account of the ‘big three’ corporations (Sony, Universal and Warner) and their resonance and relationships with associate record companies and labels. Wall uses this narrative to further consider the ‘minimising costs–maximising income’ imperative of Chapter 5, emphasising how these large oligopolies purchase not only additional record companies and labels in their quest for a dominant market share, but also distribution, production and retail outlets. This section of the book reminds the reader how a very small number of corporations control the cultural product we listen to, in addition to providing a useful synopsis of the academics (ranging from Adorno to Frith) who have critiqued this reality through the years.

Entitled ‘Meaning and representation’, Part 3 is comprised of three chapters (8–10). Commencing with a discussion around the dominance of song form in the popular music industry, Chapter 8 presents some simple strategies which assist understanding the form's construction – including factors such as repetition and change, verse and chorus and lyric analysis. This is followed by a chapter on musical meaning which, after outlining the issues contemporary musicology has faced regarding the centralisation of the text over its context, builds upon Allan Moore's recent argument (Song Means, Reference Moore2012), that how music means is of greater interest than what it means. Wall then provides some useful starting points to consider musical meaning – including recognising the polysemic nature of music, encouraging awareness of the wider context of music and the importance of ensuring that the analytical tools employed are fit for purpose. The final chapter of this section concerns the ways in which the music industry and the artists themselves construct representational systems. Wall suggests that although star personas can be built upon elements of the ‘real person’ – and this is an interesting aspect of analysis, it is arguably of more importance to consider the ways in which the meanings of constructed personas reflect culture and society at large.

The final four chapters of the book summarise the plethora of ways in which academics have studied the consumption of popular music. Wall highlights how ‘fans’ were perceived from the 1930s (most famously by Adorno) as non-discriminating consumers, who engaged with a ‘mass culture’ that maintained the inequalities between rich and poor or the powerful and subordinate. The chapter highlights the relationship between this type of mass cultural thinking and subcultural theory – where scholars have attempted to understand how social groups display their ‘musical values’ via their consumption. The final chapter of the book focuses on the ways in which we acquire, organise and share music. This is a fitting conclusion, as it deals with an area of the music industry that has changed the most since the initial edition of the book 10 years ago. The chapter examines factors such as the means through which we acquire music, changing formats (LP, CD, MP3, etc.), genre forms, downloading, and finally buyer behaviour, organising music and sharing.

Wall's book appears to be aimed primarily at the undergraduate and postgraduate markets and is consequently not written in dense academic language, facilitating easy understanding of often complex ideas and processes. The student activities, case studies, indicative research questions and further readings assist the reader to not only understand, but also put into practice, the broad range of concepts introduced. I would argue that Wall's thoughts comprise much more than an extended literature review, but really facilitate readers’ engagement with the subject matter in a meaningful way. Most importantly, the text encourages readers to challenge their assumptions, carefully introducing the understandings one needs to become a music scholar. Although it could be criticised for attempting to cover too much ground, I see the book as being an important part of the required reading on popular music related courses.