Music Genres and Corporate Cultures

How do major labels manage different genres, artists and staff? How do takeovers affect the treatment of artists? Why and how did EMI Records attempt to change their corporate culture? Music Genres and Corporate Culturesreveals how the creation, circulation and consumption of popular music are shaped by record companies and corporate business styles. Negus examines the tension between rap's public image as the "spontaneous music of the streets" and the practicalities of the market, and asks why country labels and radio stations promote top-selling acts like Garth Brooks over hard-to-classify artists like Mary Chapin Carpenter, and how the lack of soundscan systems in Puerto Rican record shops affects salsa music's position on the US Billboard chart.

Keith Negus is Lecture in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.