Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female Popular Music Stars 1st Edition

Gender, Branding, and The Modern Music Industry is the first text to demonstrate the impact of branding and packaging on the career trajectories and possibilities for female pop artists. I can’t wait to bring Kristin Lieb’s industry experience, insider access, lucid analysis and well-chosen examples into my classes on gender and popular music.

- Norma Coates, Music and Information & Media Studies, University of Western Ontario

Kristin Lieb’s new book Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry is a groundbreaking analysis of the music industry and the challenges female artists confront in developing career longevity. Lieb masterfully describes the inner workings of the modern music industry and expertly weaves together social science and business marketing, providing important information that will engross music fans, academics and business marketers alike. Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry is a ‘must-read’ for anybody interested in the entertainment industry. More broadly, those responsible for brand building will gain immensely useful new insights about the development of high-value, sustainable brands while also learning a cautionary tale about the impact social stereotypes have on the development of female celebrities in the music industry. This book shows why Kristin Lieb has emerged as a leading scholar in brand building and the entertainment industry.

- John A. Davis, Marketing, University of Oregon

Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry offers timely, relevant means for students to engage issues of gender, sexualization, exploitation and more. Lieb successfully juxtaposes lyrics and imagery with theoretical concepts from branding, mass communications and sociology, all while tracing the life cycle of female pop stars. Replete with good girls, temptresses, and whores, this book will resonate with students.

- Carol M. Liebler, Communication, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University

Back in the 1960s, earnest musicians used to refer to "selling out" as the process by which artists might achieve stardom if they turned over their creative autonomy to marketers, packagers, and powerful people in suits. This now seems charmingly quaint compared to the startling story Kristin Lieb tells about the manufacturing of female pop stars since the debut of MTV in 1981. Candid interviews with professional star-makers and a dazzling array of scholarly methodologies make this a revealing and highly disturbing look at an important chunk of the American culture industry.

Robert Thompson, Popular Culture, Syracuse University

Mixing insightful marketing communication and astute cultural analysis, Kristen Lieb’s carefully tracing out of the lifecycle of female artists within the contemporary music industry will be of much interest to fans and scholars alike. Using interviews with industry insiders, the book reveals the careful work and positioning that lies behind the creation of the public persona of the female musician - and how negotiating culturally dominant notions of sexuality is key to understanding who gets to have a marketplace presence, and thus, literally, a voice in our cultural lives. Theoretically sophisticated and readable, a fine work of synthesis and originality.

Sut Jhally, Communication, University of Massachusetts

"I heartily recommend this lucid, intelligent and excellent study and welcome it as a valuable theoretical and research model, and as a work that will greatly enhance mine and others’communication of these ideas in both the graduate and undergraduate classroom."

J. Caputi, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

Dr Kristin J. Lieb is an assistant professor of marketing communication at Emerson College. She writes about branding in various industries, and has worked as a freelance writer for Billboard and Rolling Stone, a researcher for Harvard Business School, and a marketing and business development executive for several music-related companies.