Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry

by Robert R. Faulkner (Editor)

Overview

In this remarkable study, Robert R. Faulkner shows that the Hollywood film industry, like most work communities, is dominated by a highly productive and visible elite who exercise major influence on the control of available resources, career chances, and access to opportunity. Faulkner traces a network of connections that bind together filmmakers (employers) and composers (employees) and reveals how work is allocated among composers and the division of labor within the Hollywood film community, using statistical analysis and highly revealing personal interviews. One of the very first empirical studies in the "new economic sociology," Music on Demand shows the dynamics of markets constituted by the interaction between buyers and artistic talent (the producers and directors of feature films) and the sellers of artistic talent (the composers of film scores).

Faulkner's interviews with those composers considered to be elite and those on the industry's periphery reveal how they perceive their careers, how they define commercial artistic success, and how they establish, or try to establish, those vital connections with filmmakers. Now available in paperback, this pioneering study will be of compelling interest to researchers in culture studies as well as readers interested in learning more about this little-known world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765805089
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/30/2003
Series:	Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt

Table of Contents

1: Credits and Careers an Introduction; 2: STARTING LINES Entry Points and the Web of Colleague Affiliations; 3: Up from Sprinkler Drain; 4: NO MUSICAL REVOLUTIONS Some Prompt Effects of Commercial Conventions; 5: A SMALL ARMY Career Mobility and Precariousness in the Middle Area; 6: Symbolic Interaction; 7: DUAL INTERESTS Opposing Tendencies and the Positive Aspects of Conflict; 8: CENTRALITY IN A FREELANCE SOCIAL STRUCTURE Career Performances and Professional Networks; 9: THE CHOSEN FEW Selectivity and Career as Retrospective Success; 10: Big Hollywood, Little Hollywood

Editorial Reviews

This is a terrific book. . . . [The] theoretical and methodological lessons of Music on Demand extend far beyond the substantive interests of sociologists of art . . . though they are well served. This book is additionally both a powerful analysis of freelance work organization and a demonstration of multi-method research and its value. I have never seen the latter tasks done so well. . . . There is a ‘triangulation’ here of macro-level context given meaning through observational and interview techniques that provides a remarkably insightful look into a culture business. . . . Not only has Faulkner done a wonderful analysis of the ‘Hollywood ventriloquist,’ he has provided a paradigm for future multi-method research in organization. I highly recommend this book.” —Samuel Gilmore, Contemporary Sociology "A fascinating account of career and network mechanics, superbly documented.... Faulkner has done a wonderful job of bringing into visible social traces this invisible profession." —Harrison White, Giddings Professor of Sociology, Columbia University "Music on Demand is a very impressive piece of multi-method research.... The book promises to be an important contribution to the developing field of economic sociology." —Paul DeMaggio, Yale University "A classic in economic sociology and the organization of markets as networks." —Wayne E. Baker, professor of organizational behavior, University of Michigan Business School

From the Publisher