ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the ways that large music retailers greeted new middle class aspirants, the techniques that they used to create a cosmopolitan economic display, and the cultural outcomes of leveraging values. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided the loan, had long been one of the leading proponents of neoliberal economic philosophies. The neoliberal system of social and economic values directly conflicted with earlier Gandhian approaches that emphasized anti-materialist austerity and promoted state solutions for many social ills. The IMF expected economic liberalization to generate a flow of foreign capital into India and to initiate a new export-driven economy based on the models of Taiwan, China, and South Korea. In general, however, one defines the music industry as the collection of institutions and practices that transform music into a commodity and exploit the economic value of that commodity on a massive scale.
