The authors of this book present four complementary approaches to the issue of commercial song, i.e. of that ‘gastronomic’ music produced by the music industry in order to meet trends that the industry itself discovers (and feeds) in the national market. The fact that they have restricted the focus of their inquiry to ‘gastronomic’ music already suggests the polemic attitude of their studies: considering that the whole family of ‘bad music’ – music aimed at satisfying needs by definition trivial, superficial, immediate, short-lived and vulgar – is examined and accused here, the reader might think that the authors have employed a considerable number of pages to convince us of something we never doubted. Yet the authors felt the need to establish – albeit by means of analyses that are at times animated and angry – the historical and structural foundations of such musical sleaze.

While the recent scholarship on labour in cultural industries has drawn attention to the conditions and experiences of ‘creative’ workers, few publications have addressed the ethical values informing their work. In contrast to the widespread assumption that the commercialisation of culture in this era has led to the curtailing of moral values, this article argues that artistic work has never ceased to be informed by moral values, albeit not universal ones. I draw on recent theoretical considerations raised by Mark Banks concerning Alasdair MacIntyre's and Pierre Bourdieu's theories on work ethics within the problematics of creative and cultural industries. I provide an ethnographically grounded case study that extends the presentation of Roy Cape: A Life on the Calypso and Soca Bandstand. The analysis offered suggests how the relationship between what MacIntyre calls the ‘internal and external goods' of a practice requires considerable historical and ethnographic contextualisation. I argue for a pragmatic and experience-centred approach to work ethics in the context of the broader discussion of creative labour.

This paper sets out to reflect on the implications of the heritagisation of popular music by museums. ‘Heritage’ is not something that holds intrinsic value but rather represents a social construction that produces difference by adding value to specific objects within particular social dynamics. This means that heritagisation processes operant in museums prove highly susceptible to ideological distortion and hence require scrutiny. Studying the case of the Portuguese exhibition A Magia do Vinil, a Música que Mudou a Sociedade, I analyse two specific domains: the concepts and the narrative deployed to address popular music discursively; and the objects selected for exhibition, in conjunction with the interactive practices they foster with audiences. This case study demonstrates how popular music heritagisation practices may largely correspond with those approaches taken by conventional art exhibitions – not only through the uncritical discourses they reproduce concerning their subject matter, but also through the idea that vision is the means for engaging museumgoers.

This article addresses the uses that record companies have made of two rhetorical tropes. The first is that only one in 10 artists succeed. The second is that they are investing in new music. These two notions have been combined to give the impression that record companies are taking risks both economically and aesthetically. They have been employed to justify the companies’ ownership of sound recording copyright and their system of exclusive, long-term recording contracts. More recently, the rhetoric has been employed to combat piracy, extend the term of sound recording copyright and account for the continuing usefulness of record companies. It is the argument of this article that investment in new music is not necessarily risk-taking; rather, it is the policies derived from risk-taking that provide the financial security of record companies.

Led Zeppelin have long been hailed as the ambassadors of cock rock. Yet, the band's fourth album – the commercial behemoth otherwise known as IV – features collaborations with two women: Sandy Denny's vocal contributions to ‘The Battle of Evermore’ and Memphis Minnie's co-songwriting credit on ‘When the Levee Breaks’. The two tracks feature landscapes dominated by powerful female forces via Denny's Queen of Light character and her counterpart embodied in Memphis Minnie's dark floodwaters. Through an analysis of both songs’ feminised soundscapes, I explore the links between Zeppelin's musical style and the social and political climate of 1970s post-imperial Britain. Investigation into these women's roles not only fills a gap in Led Zeppelin research, but also allows for a wider consideration of the connection between gender and representations of landscape as an important component for popular music study, particularly in terms of the cultural attitudes and politics of a post-imperial nation.

Hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan sold only one, expensive copy of their album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin. This exemplifies recent strategies by popular music artists to establish their work as art, with what Walter Benjamin calls ‘aura’, in response to the accessibility and dematerialisation enabled by digital technology as well as longstanding cultural condescension. Critics argue that popular music should not be restricted but shared, with digital technology increasing opportunities for shared consumption. This article considers the fate of music's aura in the age of mechanical reproduction, arguing that it does not disappear but is dispersed and diversified. The digital acceleration of mass reproduction has drawn mixed responses from artists, fans and commentators, and Shaolin and similar projects show how the separation of music from its physical commodity form has brought renewed attention to perennial tensions between the popular, artistic and commercial aspects of popular music.