Patrons, Curators, Inventors and Thieves

This book is a rare and unusually reflective insider account of the transformational challenges of the cultural industries over the past 15 years. Opening with a fresh new perspective on music industry history, it explores how the industrial world evolves more by narrative plausibility than by precision, recognizing that corporate identity, purpose, and power can be both reinforced and subverted by modifications to various cultural master-plots and their traditional heroes and villains. Of most interest are the insights into the strategic struggles faced by corporate managers in the cultural industries, and by intellectual property policymakers dealing with the fascinating and seismic new millennium shifts in technology, communications, and related social behaviour. Illustrating how a satisfactory 'post-private' master-narrative for the digital age has yet to emerge, the book also makes a valuable contribution to loosening the industrial-political deadlock in the debate over copyright reform. It is essential reading for cultural industry practitioners, policymakers and scholars alike, indeed for anyone who takes an interest in the changing processes which affect the creation and dissemination of knowledge and culture.