ABSTRACT
Marketing has come to play a crucial role in the circulation of cultural commodities. It is a complex practice, involving several related activities: research, product planning and design, packaging, publicity and promotion, pricing policy, and sales and distribution, and is closely tied to merchandizing and retailing. Central to the process is product positioning and imbuing cultural products with social significance to make them attractive to consumers. In popular music, this has been concentrated on the marketing of genre styles and stars, which have come to function in a similar manner to brand names, serving to order demand and stabilize sales patterns. Earlier, several of the biographical profiles in Chapter 4 indicated the increased importance of marketing in contemporary pop music. Here, I consider three historical examples of this process in the marketing of performers: Island and Bob Marley and the Wailers; Prince and the first Batman movie; and the Rolling Stones and stadium rock; along with the process of repackaging the past by the music industry – the back catalogue, reissues, and the box set.
