ABSTRACT
For many executives in record companies the issue of ‘culture’ is important, not only in terms of the sounds, words and images associated with their artists, but as a way of understanding the day-to-day working world or way of life within the organization. Numerous senior personnel have been influenced by the prescriptive literature which suggests that a company’s distinctiveness and economic competitiveness is dependent upon its ‘corporate culture’. Hence, the perceptions and practices of many people within the music industry are informed by assumptions about the culture of organizations. In the first part of this chapter I shall draw extensively on the voices of recording industry staff to give a sense of what corporate culture means in the music business, and to indicate how and when this idea is used. I shall then introduce some critical reflections and argue that, while the issue of culture within the music business is important, we should not simply confine our discussions of this issue to the boundaries of the organization. Instead, I shall argue for a focus on the broader cultures of production which intersect with the corporate world.
