Unfree Masters

Matt Stahl is Assistant Professor of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

“Here is a book that does several things at once. It explains the current status of recording artists, both as subordinated employees and as free entrepreneurs who license rights to intellectual property, namely their music compositions and recordings. It also shows how, from the standpoint of labour politics, these cultural workers are not so different from other workers in a neoliberal political economy: competing individually while dreaming of autonomy, and contractually tied to a record company that snaps up their creative output for exploitation and keeps them indebted while offering little security.” - Hillegonda Rietveld (Times Higher Education) “An important addition to the field of popular music studies and labor studies, Unfree Masters lucidly and bracingly documents the imbricated, contested working relationship between artists and labels…[the book] offers the most detailed and exhaustively researched writing to date on the contractual relationships between artists and record labels and on the political stratagems designed to codify these relationships and change the nature of labor relationships between ‘workers’ and ‘bosses’.” - John Dougan (Labor) “What Stahl’s fascinating study shows then, in sum, is that the creative labour of recording artists is like regular work in being conditioned by the inequality of the employment relation and by the spurious freedom of contract.” (Reviews in Cultural Theory) “Matt Stahl provides an absorbing account of a pivotal period in the history of the recording industry in the United States….  [T]his text is sure to spark further debate and discourse and as such Unfree Masters is a valuable and timely contribution to the field of popular music studies.”  - Kenny Barr (Popular Music) “Unfree Masters takes in an impressive range of materials and methods in shedding light on sites of ideological tension within recording industry work. It will be of interest not only to students of the music industry but also to those who seek a more general understanding of how neoliberal ideology plays out in everyday culture and politics." - Rob Drew (International Journal of Communication) "After reading this book one will understand well why major record companies are in trouble today-and will probably not be very sympathetic with their plight. Summing Up: Highly recommended." - R. J. Phillips (Choice) "Unfree Masters is an important book which ought to be widely read. It contributes not only to an enlightening turn towards cultural and musical labour in contemporary scholarship; it is also part of a renewal of radical critique in popular music studies." - Jason Toynbee (Popular Music History) "Unfree Masters makes an important contribution to the field of recording industry studies by providing a detailed overview of the landscape of labour in the North American popular music industries. The research and its implications can be applied beyond music and into other creative industries including film, television and media." - Natalie Lewandowski (Perfect Beat)

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction: Popular Music and (Creative) Labor 1Part I: Representation 311. American Idol and Narratives of Meritocracy 362. Rockumentary and the New Model Worker 64Part II: Regulation 1013. Carving Out Recording Artists from California's Seven-Year Rule 1054. Freedom, Unfreedom, and the Rhetoric of the Recording Contract 1435. Recordings Artists, Work for Hire, Employment, and Appropriation 182Conclusion: "I'm Free!" 226Notes 235Bibliography 269Index 283