Hesmondhalgh has done all students of media and communication a great service by updating this book, which offers a necessary and comprehensive map of the world of cultural industries. It is an indispensable resource for researchers and students across the world.

Hesmondhalgh has done the impossible - a phenomenal new edition that grapples with some of the biggest issues, major transformations and important continuities in the cultural industries to date. From political economics of neoliberalism to organisational business strategies; from sociocultural change through to technological impact this book digs deep into the relationship  between power, culture and production and shows us yet again why culture and the cultural industries really do matter. It's a tour de force written with style and packed with substance - a book that every media studies student and scholar should read at least once! 

The Cultural Industries is one of those rare books that is accessible to students and essential for scholars. Hesmondhalgh integrates an analysis of both the changes and continuities within cultural industries in a way that is far too rare in scholarship in this field.

A masterful text that lays out the intellectual foundation for the contemporary study and understanding of cultural industries. Thoroughly updated, this edition maintains its original framework and reflects the expanding boundaries of its subject matter to consider both new digital industries and the extension of existing media industries into internet distribution.

The publication of the 4th edition of The Cultural Industries reminds us just how important this book has been over the last decade and a half. In a period of great turbulence and far reaching transformations, we have had an almost 'real-time' charting of these industries across a vast literature, from frothily optimistic to dour doom-mongering. This edition brings us up to date, with important additions on 'digital' disruption and on the rise of China. As always, Hesmondhalgh shows us the long term continuities in the industries and, more importantly, what is at stake in the production and circulation of the meanings by which we make sense of the world.