Understanding Popular Music Culture

This completely revised and updated 6th edition of Understanding Popular Music Culture provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the production, distribution, consumption and meanings of popular music in the post-digital age.

Reflecting the breadth of scholarship within popular music studies and charting key elements of popular music culture in the post-digital age, this new edition has been expanded and comprehensively updated to offer an essential guide to the field. This new edition includes:

• Examination of platformisation, music streaming, and AI’s evolving implications on music production and consumption.

• Insights into contemporary musical texts and genres including EDM, drill, metal and reggaeton, with case studies on major artists including Adele, Chance the Rapper, Max Martin, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.

• Discussion of artist branding, viral videos, ‘cancel culture’, digital production technologies and pop songwriting.

• Brand new chapter on gender and sexuality, with focussed discussion of hip hop, hyperpop and work within the music industries.

• Extended coverage of contemporary fandoms, with a spotlight on BTS, plus consideration of music’s role in social justice movements from Black Lives Matter to climate change.

This book is written for undergraduate and graduate students studying popular music, cultural studies, media studies and sociology. It is ideal for instructors teaching courses on popular music culture, music industry studies or contemporary cultural analysis, as well as researchers seeking a comprehensive understanding of how popular music functions in today’s digital landscape.

Robert Strachan is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Liverpool. He has published widely on a variety of aspects of music and sound, including technology, creativity, audiovisual media and the history of British Black music. He is the author of Sonic Technologies: Popular Music, Digital Culture and the Creative Process (2017).

Marion Leonard is a Reader in the Department of Music at the University of Liverpool. She is author of Gender in the Music Industry (2007) and Popular Music and Museums (forthcoming). She has published on a range of popular music topics, while her current research has a focus on aspects of music heritage. She has co-edited The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (2010) and Sites of Music Heritage (2014).

Roy Shuker is Adjunct Professor in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His previous publications include Popular Music Culture. The Key Concepts (Fifth edition, 2022); Understanding Popular Music Culture (Fifth edition, 2016); and Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures: Record Collecting as a Social Practice (2010).