Getting Signed

“There is a vast gulf between making music for pleasure and making music for money. David Arditi’s Getting Signed intelligently and compellingly captures the difficulty, frustration, and hope felt by musicians as they attempt to enter the realm of the music industry and make money at music.”

—Timothy D. Taylor, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

“Even in our digitized era of streaming media and DIY culture, the seductions of landing a record deal with a cash advance have never been stronger for musicians, singers, rockers, and rappers. But in Getting Signed, sociologist David Arditi shines his well-honed critical gaze on the venality of the pop music industry, showing how even a record contract struck in good faith can be a dream-killing Faustian bargain for most musical artists.”

—David Grazian, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communication and Faculty Director of Urban Studies, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Record contracts have long been the goal of aspiring musicians, but are they still important in the era of SoundCloud? Musicians in the United States still seem to think so, flocking to auditions for The Voice and Idol brands or paying to perform at record label showcases. “The ideology of getting signed”—the belief that signing a record contract will almost infallibly lead to some measure of success—is alive and well, even as streaming, social media, and viral content have turned the recording industry upside down. Getting Signed provides a critical analysis of musicians’ contract aspirations as a cultural phenomenon that reproduces modes of power and economic exploitation, no matter how radical the route to contract. Working at the intersection of Marxist sociology, cultural sociology, critical theory, and media studies, Arditi unfolds how the ideology of getting signed penetrated an industry, created a mythos of guaranteed success, and persists in an era when power is being redefined in the light of digital technologies.