At first glance a title like Music, Markets and Consumption suggests well-covered ground in the popular music studies (PMS) domain. However, Daragh O'Reilly, Gretchen Larsen and Krzysztof Kubacki approach the topic from the position of expertise in the business area of marketing. Their contention is that, among the myriad of marketable goods, music is one of a few which possess characteristics which place it beyond mainstream management marketing techniques, and in need of a suitably explicative theory. What is presented is intended as the groundwork and foundation frameworks necessary to advance towards this objective. At the outset are two important distinctions, namely to set the work apart from more practically oriented books on music marketing, and to exclude the use of music as a component within marketing of unrelated goods and services: the emphasis here is specifically on music as a product in its own right. A third prefatory point also needs to be considered. The authors have immersed themselves in a substantial body of accumulated literature, with the aim of supplying students and scholars in two related fields with a properly nuanced understanding of the key concepts and debates. However, in addressing the needs of two groups, the approach involves a significant degree of redundancy – students and scholars of either music or marketing can be assumed to have sufficient familiarity with their own fields so as to make the issue here one of the effectiveness of their synthesis: do two largely extrinsic and many might argue oppositional intangibles (brand/music) add up, subtract or cancel?

Writing about aspects of a rapidly evolving cultural phenomenon like music, as an adjunct field, and almost exclusively through academic texts inevitably feels somewhat divorced from its subject. The nuance of industrial rhythm does not transfer easily from the pages of journals and scholarly monographs but nonetheless defines the pace of production and consumption for music makers, marketers and users alike. Through daily blogs, weekly charts, playlists, periodicals, soundclouds and social media, music flows into and through the system at a truly extraordinary rate and marketing is the factor of traction which holds the text in the consumers’ gaze. If some sense of this is lost in Music, Markets and Consumption, such is the burden of ploughing new furrows. The authors structure their book in four parts, with each constituent chapter helpfully commencing with an introduction and concluding with a summary. Part 1 introduces some of the history and founding concepts of marketing; the educational context from which a broad range of practical and theoretical perspectives on the subject emerge; and the structure of the book itself, along with obligatory chapter outline. Rubbing an art form up against the business derived language of mainstream marketing may seem abrasive but, if anything, the effect contributes to the central thesis – that this is not how music is or should be marketed. While there is some uncritical use of IFPI statistics,Footnote ¹ the second chapter performs a similar role for the music industries (although terminologically the authors opt for the singular industry) ,covering brief history, structure, revenue streams, policy and technology and preparing the ground for the main part of the work.

Part 2, ‘Production perspectives’ occupies almost half of the book and, as the title suggests, focuses on the creation of the marketable product which ultimately finds its way in various forms to consumers. ‘Music as product’ and ‘Musicians’ expand on the introduction to present a more detailed account of familiar PMS rooted ideas and arguments, albeit delivered with a marketing slant. The first significant step into the field of marketing explores the themes of music brands, branding and brand discourse on the basis that these ways of thinking about things which can be marketed are among the dominant discourses within everyday business practice. The managerial language of brand addresses ‘the symbolic or cultural aspects of business’ (p. 91) and for culturally derived products its ‘ubiquity’ means ‘dealing with or challenging it’ (p. 96). The authors explore both sides of the equation, looking first at existing artist, group and corporate music brands, along with some of the approaches to branding. Drawing on Fonarow's Empire of Dirt, music forms which might be termed brand resistant are considered as the ideological art vs. commerce counterpoint, although matters of scale shouldn't be discounted: brands are big, most music making is small. In Chapter 6, ‘Socio-cultural music branding’, the authors widen the scope of enquiry to propose how music brands come about. Based on Du Gay's Circuit of Culture (Reference Du Gay1997) this models the process as constituted through producers’ and consumers’ mutual and dynamic textual augmentation, extending a well-established idea to create the ‘music production–consumption circuit’ (p. 134). What is left unfulfilled (or, the authors might contend, open), is the sense that the question of why some music brands emerge is surely at least as, if not more important than the how.

Part 3, ‘Consumption perspectives’, falls broadly under two marketing concepts outlined at the start of the book, namely segmentation (division of the market by objective criteria), and targeting (which segments are marketed to). Both of these ideas rely on an understanding of who or what the consumer actually is, and the authors chart the evolution of thinking in the field, before exploring four reference frames – consumers, audiences, collectors and fans – and usefully summarising the respective marketing associations. Although not a case study, Chapter 8, ‘Music, fans and fandom’, considers one of the frames, effectively a form of super consumer, in more detail, before closing with an exploration of collectivity in the form of brands, tribes and scenes. This highlights the need for marketers to see the value of these groupings in and beyond the context of more established business tools.Footnote ²

Part 4 consists of two chapters, a conclusion for the work overall, preceded by ‘Live music and festivals’. At their pinnacle, mass attendance events are the most overt expressions of music as a highly marketed, co-constructed and consumed product. In a book which places the emphasis on the interaction between production and consumption this draws many of the preceding themes together, before moving to the final conclusion. Here the authors recap on the work, note the relative absence of academic interest in music from marketing academics (cf. other scholarly disciplines) and call for ‘further extensive empirical and conceptual work’ (p. 227).

Like its subject, this is a book which can be read from multiple perspectives. As an industrialised musician, and like many with an interest in enhancing the popularity of my own symbolic goods, for me the authors offer a thoughtful alternative to the often hyperbolic and over-celebratory street narratives of how to make it in the new music economy. For students in music and business areas it certainly achieves the fusion objective, and with referential depth throughout signposts a broad range of academic literature to follow through. That said, one important work I was surprised not to find in the references was Caves’ Creative Industries (2001); his ‘nobody knows’, economics-based approach to creativity and commerce is an important contribution to the respective fields. As groundwork and initial frameworks, Music, Markets and Consumption does a fine job and illuminates fertile ground for researchers. It will be interesting to see whether cross-disciplinary research teams emerge to take up the baton.