The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising Siu-Lan Tan Ron Rodman

The Oxford Handbooks (and their corollaries by competing presses) are awkward creatures. On the one hand, despite their size, they are less comprehensive than an encyclopedia. On the other hand, because of their size, they struggle to provide the focus of a traditional edited volume. The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising use this ‘in-betweeness’ to their advantage. Music and advertising is an expansive subject, drawing interest from musicology, sociology, marketing, and psychology, as well as musicians, marketers, and industry. The editors note that, because each of these stakeholders has distinct interests, goals, ideologies, and methodologies, research is often siloed. Their goal for this volume is therefore to encourage multi- and interdisciplinary research that combines theoretical and empirical approaches. With the increasing focus on interdisciplinary research and industry engagement by universities and funding bodies, their goal makes good sense. This Handbook contains forty-one chapters, split into three sections: Production, Text, and Reception. This tripartite structure is based on Chris Wharton’s model of advertising communication (Advertising: Critical Approaches (New York, 2015), 103). Each section, edited by one of the handbook’s three editors, is divided into several subsections of between two and five short chapters. This structure affords readers opportunities to draw connections across the volume’s multiple levels through any number of possible readings and rereadings. One weakness of the volume is that, despite its size, it focuses almost entirely on the American, British, and to a lesser extent European contexts. Given the increasing amount of research on consumers in Global Majority countries, casting a wider geographical net would have enriched the discussion.

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