Review of Matt Stahl: Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work (original) (raw)

1 Matt Stahl. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. 296, $24.95. Consistent with related literature on creative labor, Matt Stahl's argues that recording artists have unique characteristics that differentiate them from workers in other industries. Yet, while the most celebrated trait of these creative workers is their apparent autonomy, Stahl claims that this autonomy is typically little more than a veil that hides the alienating business imperatives of the recording industry. Hence the title Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work, which captures a doubleness that he sets out to disentangle in this ambitious account. Unfree Masters stands out from literature on creative labor in that it extends beyond purely cultural or political-economic analyses by juxtaposing the symbolic and social figure of the recording artist with the regulatory framework under which s/he operates. Structured in two parts, Representation and Regulation, the book offers an exploration of the recording artist as a public figure followed by a detailed exposition of the strategies and tactics employed in the negotiation of changes to labor and copyright law. Stahl writes compellingly about current topics. The part on representation discusses, in the first chapter, the parallel narratives of success and humiliation in American Idol, and in the second, the diverging career trajectories of the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Johnstown Massacre as represented in the rock documentary Dig!. They are stories of success and failure that offer meaningful insight into the type of behavior expected from This is the version accepted by the Journal of Popular Music Studies. To reference this review please use the following details: Aguilar, Ananay, 2015: Review of Matt Stahl's (2013) Unfree masters: recording artists and the politics of work, Journal of Popular Music Studies 27 (2), pp.235-8.