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The first book dedicated to the study of record labels established in the digital music era of the 21st century, based on interviews with industry insiders and covering cutting-edge music scenes from around the globe.

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The music industry is dominated today by three companies. Outside of it, thousands of small independent record labels have developed despite the fact that digitalization made record sales barely profitable. How can those outsiders not only survive, but thrive within mass music markets? What makes them meaningful, and to whom?

Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward show how labels act as taste-makers and scene-markers that not only curate music, but project cultural values which challenge the mainstream capitalist music industry. Focusing mostly on labels that entered independent electronic music after 2000, the authors reconstruct their aesthetics and ethics. The book draws on multiple interviews with labels such as Ostgut Ton in Berlin, Argot in Chicago, 100% Silk in Los Angeles, Ninja Tune in London, and Goma Gringa in Sao Paulo. Written by the authors of Vinyl, this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the contemporary recording industry, independent music, material culture, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.

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List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
About the authors
Cast of Interviewed Characters
List of Featured Labels
Prologue:You Can´t Put a Price on Freedom
Introduction: Sounds, Scenes, Players
1. Being Independent
2. Material Economy
3. Symbolic Economy
4. Urban Ecology
Epilogue: Writing Independent Culture
References
Index

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This is an important book for all of those interested in the micro-social worlds of independent music production. Through talking at length with many key figures involved in independent music labels in various locations across the globe, Bartmanski and Woodward get to the heart of what it means to be ´independent´ from the point of view of those who live and breathe this ethos every day in their professional and creative lives. Andy Bennett, Griffith University, Australia

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