About
60
Publications
9,820
Reads
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266
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My current research interests include music festivals and live music; music business, management, distribution and marketing; music histories; music cities; and music consumption/fandom.
I am co-author of Understanding the Music Industries (Sage) and Music Management, Marketing and PR (Sage), sole author of Music Festivals in the UK: Beyond the Carnivalesque (Routledge), and co-editor of Researching Live Music (Routledge) and Media Narratives in Popular Music (Bloomsbury).
Additional affiliations
July 2016 - present
January 2007 - July 2016
Position
- Lecturer
Description
- My work encompasses the recorded and live music industries, music festivals, music history, music culture, music marketing and the intersection of fan practises and intellectual property law.
January 2007 - present
Position
- Senior Lecturer in Popular Music
Description
- I lead and teach music industry, music culture and music entrepreneurship units across levels 4-6.
Education
September 2002 - March 2007
September 2001 - September 2002
September 1998 - July 2001
Publications
Publications (60)
This chapter examines the narrative construction of two British music festival films – Message to Love: the Isle of Wight Festival (1995) and Glastonbury Fayre (1972) – that have, perhaps surprisingly, received little prior attention within academia. These films portray the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival and the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre – events which w...
Alongside every successful artist, there’s a team.
This book is your guide to the study and practice of music management and the fast-moving music business of the 21st century.
Featuring exclusive interviews with industry experts and discussions of well-known artists, it covers key areas such as artist development, branding, the live music secto...
The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes, and music genres has long been mediated through academic and popular press publications such as magazines, films, and television documentaries. Media Narratives in Popular Music examines these various publications and questions how and why they are constructed. It considers the typically li...
This chapter examines outdoor music festivals and their relationships with space and place. After a discussion of definitions and categorizations related to music festivals, the chapter explores theories of space and place including the concept of 'cyclic places'.
The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes, and music genres has long been mediated through academic and popular press publications such as magazines, films, and television documentaries. Media Narratives in Popular Music examines these various publications and questions how and why they are constructed. It considers the typically li...
The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes, and music genres has long been mediated through academic and popular press publications such as magazines, films, and television documentaries. Media Narratives in Popular Music examines these various publications and questions how and why they are constructed. It considers the typically li...
In this chapter I examine some of the innovative responses to the lockdown that emerged in the early months of the pandemic, with a focus on socially-distanced events, the development of the livestreaming and virtual reality (VR) sector, and the growth of illegal raves . I argue that the latter presage a return in fortunes for the outdoor music fes...
Academic and journalistic accounts of ‘progressive rock’ typically construct it as a British genre that emerged in the late 1960s, flourished commercially and artistically from 1972 to 1974 and sank into decline by the late 1970s due primarily (in Britain) to the emergence of punk rock in 1976 (Macan, 1997; Stump, 1997; Martin, 1998). These studies...
In this presentation I will argue that while progressive rock may be regarded and discussed as a genre, meta-genre, style or network of styles (as often seen in academic and journalistic work and in fan discussion), we might also examine the development of progressive rock at a more granular level by adopting and adapting the notion of musical idio...
This chapter adds to a growing subfield of music festival studies by examining the business practices and cultures of the commercial outdoor sector, with a particular focus on rock, pop and dance music events. The events of this sector require substantial financial and other capital in order to be staged and achieve success, yet the market is highl...
Introduction to the special issue: contemporary issues in live music
This article examines the narrative construction of two British music festival films, Message to Love: the Isle of Wight Festival (1995) and Glastonbury Fayre (1972): films which demonstrate narratives and techniques familiar from Woodstock – Three Days of Peace and Music (1970). I argue that these films, which portray the 1970 Isle of Wight Festiv...
The upsurge of academic interest in the genre known as progressive rock has take little account of how discourses surrounding the term were deployed in popular culture in the past, especially within the music press. To address this, we analyze three British weekly music papers of the 1960s and 1970s: Melody Maker, New Musical Express and Sounds. We...
This presentation examines the global proliferation of ‘progressive’ rock music, with a particular focus on interrogating the shifting definitions, uses and stereotypes associated with the term ‘progressive’ in both popular and academic accounts. It will question the emphasis on musicological complexity and Anglocentricity typically found in the wo...
This presentation examines the potential influence of Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music (1970) on the narrative choices and editing of Message to Love: the Isle of Wight Festival (1995). The latter film purports to capture the atmosphere and story of the third Isle of Wight Festival, held in 1970, which was regarded at the time as Britain’s...
Technological developments in home recording and internet distribution mean
that it is now easier than ever before for musicians both to create music and to
distribute it directly to consumers. The traditional economic relations and structures
of the recording and copyright industries may largely be bypassed through
processes of disintermediation,...
An invited blog piece for the Live Music Exchange which examines the volatility of outdoor music festivals in the UK. Available as open access here: http://livemusicexchange.org/blog/risky-business-the-volatility-and-failure-of-outdoor-music-festivals-in-the-uk-chris-anderton/
This invited talk discussed the history of outdoor music festival in the UK through the lens of moral panics and commercialisation
The outdoor music festival market has developed and commercialised significantly
since the mid-1990s and is now a mainstream part of the British summertime
leisure experience. The overall number of outdoor music festivals
staged in the UK doubled between 2005 and 2011 to reach a peak of over 500
events. UK Music (2016) estimates that the sector...
Technological developments in home recording and internet distribution mean that it is now easier than ever before for musicians both to create music and to distribute it directly to consumers. The traditional economic relations and structures of the recording and copyright industries may largely be bypassed through processes of disintermediation,...
Music festivals may become intimately associated with the locations which host them. For a few days each year, these sites take on a life of their own, with their own accommodation, entertainments, social experience, retail opportunities and policing. They form temporary villages or towns that are constructed and annually reconstructed in their own...
Music festivals may become intimately associated with the locations which host them. For a few days each year, these sites take on a life of their own, with their own accommodation, entertainments, social experience, retail opportunities and policing. They form temporary villages or towns that are constructed and annually re-constructed in their ow...
This presentation examines the use of the term ‘progressive’ in the British music press of the early 1970s, with a particular focus on how journalists, artists and readers applied and understood the term, and how their use of the term changed over time. The primary source material is the weekly music magazine Melody Maker, though the analysis will...
Technological developments in home recording and internet distribution mean that it is now easier than ever before for musicians both to create music and to distribute it to the public for a relatively minimal financial outlay. The traditional economic relations and structures of the recording and copyright industries may largely be bypassed throug...
Over the past twenty years, the outdoor rock, pop and dance music festival market of the UK has become increasingly commercial and professional in its organisation, and transformed into an economically significant leisure and tourist resource (UK Music 2016). In so doing, questions are raised regarding the ‘true meaning’ of festivals and the varied...
This article examines fan practices of record collecting in the digital environment. It
examines two forms of fan practice that suggest a shift from the secondary involvement
(Shuker 2010) of physical record collecting to a tertiary form predicated on the collection
and distribution of digital music files. The first digital era practice involves th...
Corporate sponsorship, experiential marketing and event branding have all grown in importance for outdoor music festivals since the early-mid 1990s (especially the mid- to large-scale sector). Indeed, they may be essential to the commercial and aesthetic image, success and longevity of specific events, and an important source of financial and marke...
This presentation examines how music fans have been active in archiving and distributing the audio content (and sometimes imagery and information about) ‘obsolete objects’ (Straw, 2000) such as ‘private press’ vinyl and cassette releases produced under do-it-yourself/release-it-yourself conditions (Reynolds, 2005: 92), and rare, out-of-print (OOP)...
This presentation examines the role of music fans as cultural intermediaries who are active in the curation, archiving and promotion of progressive rock music. Fans not only work with the official products of the music industries, but also create, organise, discuss and circulate their own materials/information. In each case, fans act as ‘expert fil...
Progressive rock’s ‘golden age’ is typically defined as a decade beginning in the late 1960s and ending in the late 1970s when progressive rock’s most visible and successful acts had either run out of steam, broken up, or begun to adopt a more mainstream, radio-friendly style. However, ‘progressive’ rock enjoyed a nascent revival in the early 1980s...
In den letzten Jahren ist die Popkultur wieder vermehrt von Naturbezügen geprägt. In Songs, Filmen, Romanen, in der Auseinandersetzung mit Vergemeinschaftungen und dem eigenen Körper tauchen Wälder, Folkgitarren und grüne Hipster auf. Doch diese Phänomene sind keine naive Rückkehr zur Hippiekultur - sie werden zu dem der Popkultur ganz eigenen Spie...
The post-Millennial expansion of music festivals in the UK has been accompanied by a marked upsurge in sponsorship and branding activities (Anderton 2009). These sponsorship and branding activities provide the necessary financial and marketing support required by many events in order to survive in an increasingly competitive and saturated market, b...
This presentation examined the history and strategies of brand and sponsor relationships at British music festivals, and their interactions with the cultural history of the sector.
This presentation looked at bloggers and online fandom in relation to creative audiences and the issues and conflicts raised with regard to traditional models of copyright.
This presentation gave an overview of the activities of SMILEfest - a conference and festival event staged with the active participation of undergraduate students at Southampton Solent University (see www.smilefest.co.uk).
This chapter examines the phenomenon of sponsorship and branding at music festivals: how they operate and how they work with the preexisting cultural meanings of music festival culture.
This presentation explored the 'dark ages' of early 1980s progressive rock in the UK - an era usually thought to lack much activity within the genre, yet which saw a grassroots revival across Britain that was reported in the press of the time and led to the creation of many 'private press' releases as well as some signings with record companies. It...
This presentation examined the practices of psuedo- record labels, defined as fan-organised groupings involved in the preservation and distribution of live concert recordings and rarities through not-for-profit means.
A short article dealing with the portfolio nature of contemporary music industry careers. It is part of The 360 Deal:
New Music Strategies has brought together some of the most forward-thinking musicians and industry people to each contribute 360 words outlining the best advice they can give to young musicians and new music industry workers. The a...
Everyone knows music is big business, but do you really understand how ideas and inspiration become songs, products, downloads, concerts and careers?
This textbook presents a full overview of the many elements of the music industries, and offers a sustained focus on ‘understanding’ the processes that have driven and continue to drive the developme...
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the cultural heritage of outdoor rock and pop music festivals in Britain since the mid‐1960s, and relates it to developments in, and critiques of, corporate sponsorship in the contemporary music festival sector.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses extant research materials to construct an account of Britis...
This presentation looked at the cultural history of British music festivals and the gradual introduction, problems and contradictions of brand sponsorship to the sector in the 1990s and 2000s.
There has been a marked resurgence of interest in progressive rock music both commercially and critically, with a number of articles and books now reassessing its styles, meanings, politics and appeal. Despite this, there has been a tendency to define progressive rock through a ‘symphonic orthodoxy’ which preferences a limited, albeit highly succes...
This presentation examined how a symphonic orthodoxy within media representations of progressive rock has served to sidetrack the contributions of European musicians in the early 1970s. It explored some of the alternatives to this orthodoxy in order to demonstrate the important contribution of musicians in France, Germany and Italy (amongst others)...
This presentation looked at the progressive rock music of Germany and Italy in the early 1970s, and how the society and culture of the time affected the music that was produced.
This presentation examined the progressive music of the late 1970s and early 1980s, arguing that it did not, as posited by many authors. die out at this time. Instead, it shifted to the grass roots of music making across the UK in particular, where private press releases and a local gigging network sustained continued activity.
This chapter examines Italian progressive rock as an example of early European progressive rock which created its own musical styles within its own cultural milieu, rather than simply copying that of British exemplars. It also looks at the lay discourses of music fans who categorise different sub-genres of progressive rock (rather than these being...
This presentation examined the notion of Englishness in relation to the representation and design of the Cropredy Festival in Oxfordshire, which is managed by the folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention.
This presentation looked notions of rurality and difference in relation to the Cropedy music festival in Oxfordshire.
The V Festival has been held since 1996, and was the first large-scale outdoor rock and pop music festival in Britain to be held at two sites simultaneously over one weekend. Developed as a mainstream alternative to the Glastonbury and Reading Festivals, it struggled to create a distinctive identity or gain critical acceptance, especially among the...
This presentation looked at the cultural history and milieu of Italian progressive rock and questioned Bill Martin's (1998) surprise that bands such as PFM and BdMS could produce progressive rock music in 1972 and beyond which was not entirely in debt to British symphonic rock models of the era. It suggested further that progressive rock was emergi...
This presentation examined the V Festival in terms of its commercialisation of aspects of the 'carnivalesque', and what this says about the cultural and economic development of the music festival sector as a whole in the UK since the mid-1990s.
This thesis examines the cultural history and geography of music festivals in the UK, using case studies of the V Festival, the Cropredy Festival, and the Cambridge Folk Festival.
This chapter examines the practice of not-for-profit trading of unauthorised live music recordings between fans (as distinct from commercial bootlegging), and suggests that while these infringe copyright, there are also benefits for artists in fostering such practices.
Projects
Project (1)
- To add to local and national debates about strategies to develop urban musical and cultural economies
- To develop links between research, practitioner and resident communities around the notion of Southampton as a Music City
- To develop a participatory archive of music histories related to Southampton and its surrounding areas, including oral histories and memorabilia
