ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the global music industries (GMI) present an important case study in transnational understandings of hegemonies of men for three main reasons. First, existing data and academic accounts suggest a huge skew toward white, cis-gendered men, based in the Global North, as executives and workers within the industries. Second, Global Northern men’s privileged position as critics, bloggers and consumers, shape gendered notions of musical value internationally which, in turn, reinforce and perpetuate the industries themselves. Third, the types of discourse reinforced by musical representations of men, particularly in popular music, require a transnational, postcolonial focus in order to adequately understand and interpret. This chapter first outlines how transnational and multinational music institutions came to be spaces which are dominated by men, providing figures from the industries to highlight these issues. It examines global music consumption and sales data before moving on to outline how patterns of music consumption are unequally distributed across the globe. Here, the chapter explores how the manufacture and disposal of musical objects, especially in light of ‘digitalization’, implicate interdependent, gendered and racialized processes of global exploitation. Finally, the chapter concludes by looking at how reading images of ‘softening’ and ‘hyper’-masculinities in music – as well as their political potential for disrupting or maintaining hegemonic practices – must be understood relationally and transnationally, in order to avoid perpetuating racist and colonialist analyses.
