Music Commodities, Markets, and Values

This book examines music stores as sites of cultural production in contemporary India. Analyzing social practices of selling music in a variety of contexts, it focuses on the economic and social values produced and circulated by music retailers in the marketplace. It discusses the cultural histories of the recording industry, the social changes that have accompanied India's economic liberalization reforms, and the realities of selling music in India as digital circulation of music recordings gradually displaced physical distribution. This ethnography of the practices, spaces, and anxieties of selling music in urban India will be an important resource for scholars in a wide range of fields.