Thursday, March 10, 2022 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM EST
Online Location, Zoom Virtual Event
Join us virtually at the Cultural Studies Colloquium when we welcome Cultural Studies alum David Arditi, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington. David's talk titled "Record Contracts: Ideology in Action" will be part of the annual Cultural Studies recruitment event and is open to all.
David will be discussing his book, Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians and Power in Society, which explores the way musicians’ dreams become their source of exploitation. The following is an abstract of his upcoming talk:
"Critique of ideology has been an underlying theme in critical theory dating back to Marx. Ideology helps to reproduce the dominant material relations in society. According to Horkheimer and Adorno, companies produce mass culture as a way to distract workers from the mundaneness of industrial labor. At the same time, culture industry workers succumb to the same mundaneness of labor through the industrialization of culture. In this talk, I analyze the “ideology of getting signed” – a social phenomenon in which aspiring musicians dream of signing a record contract—and theorize ideology in the Frankfurt tradition. Record contracts provide major record labels with the means to exploit musicians’ labor, but recording artists rarely earn money from these contracts. Because most people are unaware of how record contracts operate at the same time they see celebrity musicians living lavish lifestyles, they believe record contracts result in wealth. Alienation between different musicians, musicians and fans, and musicians and the recorded product allows this ideology to function. I demonstrate that ideology obscures the lived reality of recording artists and it motivates aspiring musicians to sign recording contracts."
Some background: As a gigging drummer, David Arditi became interested in the livelihoods of musicians. His research is at the intersection of music, culture, and technology. David’s newest book is Streaming Culture: Subscription Platforms and the Unending Consumption, which explores the changing nature of capitalism in a society that places subscriptions above material commodities. David is author of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the Streaming Era and co-editor of The Dialectic of Digital Culture with Jennifer Miller. His research has appeared in Critical Sociology, Popular Music & Society, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Media Fields Journal, and Civilisations. He also serves as Editor of Fast Capitalism.
