Rethinking the Music Business. Music Contexts, Rights, Data, and COVID-19
Abstract
COVID-19 had a global impact on health, communities, and the economy. As a result of COVID-19, music festivals, gigs, and events were canceled or postponed across the world. This directly affected the incomes and practices of many artists and the revenue for many entities in the music business. Despite this crisis, however, there are pre-existing trends in the music business – the rise of the streaming economy, technological change (virtual and augmented reality, blockchain, etc.), and new copyright legislation. Some of these trends were impacted by the COVID-19 crisis while others were not.
This book addresses these challenges and trends by following a two-pronged approach: the first part focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the music business, and the second features general perspectives. Throughout both parts, case studies bring various themes to life. The contributors address issues within the music business before and during COVID-19. Using various critical approaches for studying the music business, this research-based book addresses key questions concerning music contexts, rights, data, and COVID-19. Rethinking the music business is a valuable study aid for undergraduate and postgraduate students in subjects including the music business, cultural economics, cultural management, creative and cultural industries studies, business and management studies, and media and communications.
There are two main types of income earned by musicians. The first is capital income, which is the type of income derived from owning the intellectual rights to music, either through record sales or leveraging moral rights. The second is labour income, which is generated from live per- formance and takes the form of performance fees. Historically, these two activities are consid- ered separate with some ontological and economic interdependences, creating two different streams of income; however, we present a case which shows that the two merged when much ‘live’ music appeared online during the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of livestreams. These livestreams theoretically allow musicians to earn both capital income and labour income from the same activity. We use ‘design culture’, as a form of organizational culture, to describe how musicians can use the new livestreaming trend to realize better/fairer deals for themselves. This is especially prescient because in contemporary history, most musicians cannot earn a sustaina- ble income from releasing recorded music, so have relied on live performance. Live performance has thus become less ephemeral, as has the income derived from it.
This paper focuses on how digitalisation has influenced actors’ value determination and value creation in the Swedish music market. It draws on the service-dominant logic (SDL) and the service ecosystem perspective to conceptualise value as co-created through the integration of resources by multiple actors in service exchange, enabled and constrained by institutions and institutional arrangements. Empirically, we draw on a qualitative study of the digitalisation of the Swedish music market that consists of fifty-two interviews with various actors. The findings suggest that digitalisation has influenced service engagement and consequently value creation and determination for various actors, and especially for consumers and producers. This paper contributes by integrating SDL and the service ecosystem perspective into music business research in a novel way to promote a deeper understanding of value, value determination, and value co-creation. This paper also contributes to SDL by suggesting that both value-in-exchange and value-in-use are important aspects of value determination and value co-creation.
This article considers how media workers and organizations make use of the abundance of metrics available in the contemporary online environment. The expansion of audience measurement on digital music platforms, dashboard analytics, and third-party providers raises broad societal concerns about the quantification of culture; however, less attention has been paid to how professionals in the music industries approach, understand, and deploy these metrics in their work. Drawing on survey and interview data, we found that music workers do not take metrics on faith or reject them out of hand; rather, they make sense of them, deploy them strategically, and narrate their meanings to give themselves rationales to make investments and predictions and to persuade others to do so.
Using weekly music charts data in ten countries over the period 1990 to 2015, we analyze whether digitization led to a trend of homogenization of music content or conversely to a greater acoustic disparity within music charts. Acoustic diversity measures the variance of a set of songs calculated across the following acoustic attributes: danceability, speechiness; valence; liveness; acousticness; energy; instrumentalness; loudness; tempo; duration. We consider the pre-digitization period (1990-1999) and split the digitization era in four periods: (1) the period characterized by unsanctioned music distribution via filesharing networks; (2) the period where the iTunes Music Store was the dominant platform of digital music distribution; (3) the emergence of social network services such as YouTube as powerful tastemakers; and (4) the emergence of global music streaming services, such as Spotify, as the dominant model for online music distribution. Our main result is that while acoustic diversity decreased during the iTunes and the YouTube periods, the period that begins with the introduction of audio streaming services, such as Spotify, represents a turning point and is marked by a significant increase in acoustic diversity.
Given the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly uncertain socio-economic conditions, cultural practice remains a stable canvas upon which young people draw the most agency and exercise a sense of freedom. This article reports on an international research collaboration, drawing on the voices of 77 young musicians from three countries—Australia, England and Portugal—who were interviewed about their music-making practices during lockdown. Despite reporting loss of jobs and income and the social distancing restrictions placed upon the ability to make music, most young music-makers were positive about the value of having more time, to be both producers and consumers of music. At the same time, however, our data also highlight increasing forms of inequality among young music-makers. This article argues that despite short-term gains in relation to developing musical practice, the longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on the music industry will affect the sector for years to come.
This article examines knowledge production in the sociology of music. Focusing on the idea of cool music, we interrogate the nature of music researchers' relationship with their object of research. While the qualification and connotation of cool is widespread in popular music, sociology has largely neglected to engage with it as an object of research. Instead, the sociological investigation of music audiences is divided between two opposed but co‐constructed paradigms that ultimately do not account for how cool emerges as a qualifier and connotation, how it performs as a discourse on music, and to what effect. Using the example of aging music researchers as a departure point, we examine how the cool connotations of music function as a mode of discourse that legitimates particular knowledge, practice, and taste, demarcating insider/outsider status. We explore how music acquires social connotations such as “cool” and whether that alters music researchers' approaches to it. We argue that apart from the disclosure of inclinations, social characteristics, and relationships to the object of research (music scenes, preferences, fandom, and so on), the tradition of reflexive empirical perspectives in music sociology should incorporate further deconstruction of the transformative dimensions in the relations between music and researcher. Music, as a complex and dynamic object, thus, requires sociology to produce accounts that both encompass people's enjoyment and experience as well as its boundary‐defining capacity.
Purpose
This paper sets out to compare different methodologies for measuring the value(s) of live popular music and to explore the different motivations amongst a range of organisations engaged in that work.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyse how the values of live music are measured, who does it and why. Based on this analysis the authors present a model that visualises the myriad of organisations, methods, aims and objectives involved.
Findings
The authors identify three approaches to measuring the impact of live music (economic impact studies, mapping and censuses and social sciences and humanities) and three types of actors (industry, policy and academia). The analysis of these demonstrates that measuring live music is not a neutral activity, but itself constructs a vision on how live music ecologies function
Practical implications
For cultural organisations, demonstrating the outcomes of their work is important in acquiring various forms of support. The model presented in this paper helps them to select adequate methodologies and to reflect on the consequences of particular approaches to measuring live music activities.
Originality/value
While the number of studies measuring live music's impact is growing, theoretical and methodological reflection on these activities is missing. The authors compare the different methodologies by discussing strengths and weaknesses. This results in a model that identifies gaps in existing studies and explores new directions for future live music research. It enhances understanding of how different ways of measuring live music affect policymaking and conceptions of what live music is and should be.
This article reports data collected from 385 performing arts professionals using the HEartS Professional Survey during the COVID-19 Lockdown 1.0 in the United Kingdom. Study 1 examined characteristics of performing arts professionals’ work and health, and investigated how these relate to standardized measures of wellbeing. Study 2 examined the effects of the lockdown on work and wellbeing in the respondents’ own words. Findings from Study 1 indicate a substantial reduction in work and income. 53% reported financial hardship, 85% reported increased anxiety, and 63% reported being lonelier than before the crisis. 61% sought support on finances while only 45% did so on health and wellbeing. Multiple regression analyses, using the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Social Connectedness Scale, and Three-Item Loneliness Scale as outcome variables, indicate that perceived financial hardship was associated with lower wellbeing and higher depression and loneliness scores. Higher self-rated health was associated with higher wellbeing and lower depression scores. More physical activity before lockdown was associated with higher wellbeing and social connectedness scores, as well as lower loneliness scores, and an increase in physical activity during lockdown compared with before, as well as older age, were associated with higher wellbeing and social connectedness scores, and lower depression and loneliness scores. Thematic inductive analysis of 341 open responses in Study 2 identified five overarching themes characterizing the effects of Lockdown 1.0: lost or uncertain work and income , including canceled work, financial concerns, and uncertainties for the future; constraints of lockdown working , including challenges of working at home, struggles with online work and skill maintenance, and caring responsibilities; loss and vulnerability , including reduced social connections, lack of support, vulnerability, feelings of loss and grief, and concern for others; detrimental effects on health and wellbeing , including anxiety, low or unstable mood, poorer physical health, and lack of motivation; and professional and personal opportunities , including coping well or living more healthily, more time and less pressure, new possibilities and activities, enhanced social connections, and new skills. Lockdown 1.0 had profound effects on performing arts professionals, but our findings reveal some opportunities and compelling links between positive wellbeing and physical activity.
The music business is a multifaceted, transnational industry that operates within complex and rapidly changing political, economic, cultural and technological contexts. The mode and manner of how music is created, obtained, consumed and exploited is evolving rapidly. It is based on relationships that can be both complimentary and at times confrontational, and around roles that interact, overlap and sometimes merge, reflecting the competing and coinciding interests of creative artists and music industry professionals. It falls to music law and legal practice to provide the underpinning framework to enable these complex relationships to flourish, to provide a means to resolve disputes, and to facilitate commerce in a challenging and dynamic business environment.
The Present and Future of Music Law presents thirteen case studies written by experts in their fields, examining a range of key topics at the points where music law and the post-digital music industry intersect, offering a timely exploration of the current landscape and insights into the future shape of the interface between music business and music law.
The Internet not only affects business processes and information exchange, but also art, including music. Communication between performers and their followers has moved to this network, and more specifically, to social media. The growing popularity of the digital music format has contributed to a dynamic development of streaming services. Therefore, the present paper aims to analyse the relation between the number of people following and watching popular artists on three social networks and the number of listeners on a streaming service. Furthermore, it examines the presence of artists on social media and streaming services. The study findings will help the performers decide which of their Internet activities are most related to the results they have achieved on the streaming service. They may also increase the efficiency of planning activities aimed at increasing the number of followers, and, accordingly, the number of people listening to their music.
In this introduction, we outline the context for the international emergence of cultural policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our article first offers a general account of how arts and culture have been affected by the pandemic, before looking at some of the state interventions (bailouts’) to support the professional sector, and the present and future conditions they might be seeking to preserve or occasion. We then examine the UK as a particular case study. In rejecting a politics of “bailout” and “return”, and in synchrony with others seeking to situate culture in a re-vitalised political economy, we argue that professional arts and culture needs to move forward with a “new deal” in hand; one that can enhance culture’s potential and multipart value, as well as help the sector progressively engage with the many social, economic and environmental challenges ahead and beyond C-19.
The digital music industries have encountered major structural transformations driven by a rapidly evolving new media environment and the evolution of music streaming as the dominant consumption format. Much analysis has been on broad macro issues driven by the concerns of major stakeholders such as record labels and music publishers. Through autoethnography, the micro-perspective of an independent musician is presented, highlighting the challenges of music mar-keting planning in a dynamic digital business environment. Future directions for independent music marketing practice are explored.
How has the Australian music industry’s mental health crisis played out in the media during the coronavirus pandemic? This commentary article considers a snapshot of media reports about this issue. We survey print and online media, press releases, official websites, online seminars and social media from March to June 2020. During this time, the industry has faced financial loss, job insecurity and anxiety for the future of Australian music, thus placing unprecedented strain on an industry already characterised by poor mental health. We identify four key narratives communicated by the media, which we call (1) acknowledging grief and loss, (2) supporting creativity and well-being, (3) adapting to the new normal and (4) envisaging a post-pandemic future. These narratives illustrate overarching concern for music industry workers’ mental health and also the provision of helpful strategies for managing these issues.
Great controversy has surrounded the growth of the music streaming services that are now central to the music industries internationally. One important set of criticisms concerns the amount of money that music creators receive for the recorded music that is distributed on these services. Many claim that music streaming has made it harder than before for musicians to make a living from music. This article identifies and discusses some significant problems of argument and evidence surrounding these criticisms, as follows: (a) a dubious focus on ‘per-stream’ rates offered by music streaming services, (b) a failure to see streaming services as part of wider systems of music and ownership, (c) tendencies towards simplification when systemic problems are taken into account, and (d) the limited evidence provided when commentators claim, imply or assume that the system has become notably less just. It then discusses debates concerning what might be done to improve the system, especially whether ‘user-centric’ systems of payment might be adopted, instead of the current ‘pro-rata’ system. The article suggests that more musicians rather than fewer might now be able to earn money from recorded music than in preceding recorded-music systems. But it also proposes that the current system retains the striking inequalities and generally poor working conditions that characterised its predecessors, and that better debate requires greater transparency about usage and payment on the part of streaming services and music businesses.
Drawing on Mark Katz’s notion of phonographic effects—where musicians, during the advent of early recording technology, altered their style of play to be better captured by microphones—this article explores some of the “platform effects” that arise in the shift to platformization and how cultural goods and user practices are re-formatted in the process. In particular, I examine the case of the music streaming service Spotify to think through the variety of means, sonic, and otherwise, that artists, labels, and other platform stakeholders use to “optimize” music to respond to the pressures platformization creates. I develop a typology of strategies—sonic optimization, data optimization, and infrastructural optimization—to consider the creative and logistical challenges optimization poses for platforms, artists, and users alike. From creating playlist friendly songs to musical spam to artificial play counts, I use the blurry lines these cases create to explore the tensions between the competing needs of platform providers, content producers, and users. I argue that music, as data, adds pressure on musicians and producers to think and act like software developers and coders, treating their music not just as songs that need to reach listeners, but as an intermingling of sonic content and coded metadata that needs to be prepared and readied for discovery. This optimization of culture, and the pressures it creates, affects not just musicians, but content producers of all kinds (e.g., video, podcasts, apps, books, etc.) who are forced to negotiate their relationships digital culture and the platforms through which it circulates.
Digital transformation, driven by technological advances and changing customer requirements, is stimulating the use of digital marketing. 11% of Swiss organizations regard digital marketing as a key investment area as part of their overall digital transformation strategy, with over one third of Swiss organizations currently investing in new sales and marketing tools. Unfortunately, there are implementation gaps between Swiss small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and large enterprises (LE). In short, SME are lagging behind LE and generally do not use digital marketing tools, channels, and platforms. Barriers that prevent SME from adopting higher digital marketing tools are cultural change, limited resources/high costs, technology, and expertise. The objective of this study is to close the knowledge gap and provide SME with an overview of the most important digital marketing tools based on a literature review in order to leverage the opportunity of digital technology in the marketing discipline and reduce the distance to LE. The literature review identified nineteen relevant articles. These articles include 162 citations of tools, channels, platforms, and methods, which can be used by SME to close the knowledge gap and thus take advantage of a new, digital marketing portfolio. The twenty-four unique digital marketing tools are presented based on a comparative analysis, with the eleven most often cited tools being defined and described. Potential for further research was identified.
Festivals have become a part of the cultural fabric of global society and a tourism and leisure pursuit that is participated in by many. The COVID-19 crisis has meant that many festivals in 2020 have been canceled or postponed. But what are the long term impacts for the future of the industry, and accessibility to these events? Will greater restrictions be placed on licensing, with a maximum number of attendees allowed? Will there be a certification scheme for attendees and participants based on current testing methods for COVID-19? Will festivals become more ‘exclusive’, or will there be more smaller-scale accessible organizations that work within a new ‘sharing economy’? This paper explores some of the issues and possibilities for the future of the festivals industry by using an ecological economist’s view of the potential shift in economic paradigms as outcomes of the pandemic.
The intervention of digital service providers (DSPs) or platforms, such as Spotify Apple Music and Tidal, that supply streamed music has fundamentally altered the operation of copyright management organisations (CMOs) and the way song-writers and recording artists are paid. Platform economics has emerged from the economic analysis of two- and multi-sided markets, offering new insights into the way business is conducted in the digital sphere and is applied here to music streaming services. The business model for music streaming differs from previous arrangements by which the royalty paid to song-writers and performers was a percentage of sales. In the case of streamed music, payment is based on revenues from both subscriptions and ad-based free services. The DSP agrees a rate per stream with the various rights holders that varies according to the deal made with each of the major record labels, with CMOs, with representatives of independent labels and with unsigned artists and song-writers with consequences for artists’ earnings. The article discusses these various strands with a view to understanding royalty payments for streamed music in terms of platform economics, offering some data and information from the Norwegian music industry to give empirical support to the analysis.
This special issue is a reflection by tourism scholars on the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world, with travel and tourism being among the most sig- nificant areas to bear those impacts. However, instead of an analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism places and sectors, as is the emphasis for many other journal special issues this year, the papers in this issue focus on visions of how the pandemic events of 2020 are contributing to a possibly substantial, meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically. This is not a return to a ‘normal’ that existed before – but is instead a vision of how the world is changing, evolving, and transforming into something different from what it was before the 2020 global pandemic experience. Comments from the guest editors for this special issue are individually identified in this introduction editorial.
The full paper is available Open Access (Free of Cost) - see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2020.1770326
It has been widely recognized that platforms utilize their editorial capacity to transform the industries they intermediate. In this paper, we examine the intermediary role of the leading audio streaming platform – Spotify – on the recorded music industry. Spotify is often called the ‘new radio’ for the influence it has on breaking songs and artists, and for the role it plays in music discovery and consumption. Our purpose is to determine whether Spotify is leveling the playing field or entrenching hierarchies between major labels and independent labels. We attempt to answer this question through a longitudinal analysis of content owners (major labels or ‘indies’) and formats (albums, tracks, or playlists) promoted by Spotify through its global Twitter account: @Spotify. As a carefully curated venue for corporate speech @Spotify provides a window into continuities and changes in Spotify’s corporate strategy. By using @Spotify as a proxy through which to track patterns of promotion between the years 2012 and 2018, this paper offers a novel empirical examination of how Spotify is shaping the consumption of music, and in turn the structure of the recording industry. In doing so, we provide evidence for speculating about the future of the recorded music industry in a platform era.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy is the first thorough analysis of how policy frames the behavior of audiences, industries, and governments in the production and consumption of popular music. Covering a range of industrial and national contexts, this collection assesses how music policy has become an important arm of government, and a contentious arena of global debate across areas of cultural trade, intellectual property, and mediacultural content. It brings together a diverse range of researchers to reveal how histories of music policy development continue to inform contemporary policy and industry practice. The Handbook maps individual nation case studies with detailed assessment of music industry sectors. Drawing on international experts, the volume offers insight into global debates about popular music within broader social, economic, and geopolitical contexts.
The informal economy represents a significant share of output and employment in many developing countries. Yet little is known about this hidden engine of innovation. This pioneering study addresses some crucial questions, including: what is the role of the informal sector in economic development? How does innovation occur in the informal economy? How does it spread, who are the key actors and what impacts does it have? How do inventors and entrepreneurs in the informal economy reap benefits from their innovations? What stops informal sector innovation from scaling up? How can informal sector innovation in developing countries be measured? And what policies might support informal sector innovation and improve its impacts? This book will stimulate further work on this crucial but under-researched subject. As well as rich empirical evidence from several groundbreaking studies, it includes conceptual and methodological tools and policy recommendations to help researchers and policy-makers understand innovation in the informal economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated closures of live music venues have confronted operators in Germany with fundamental uncertainty about the prospects of their venues. In the summer of 2020, both public and political debates revolved around the question of whether operators might have to close or could remain open during the crisis, with the overarching viewpoint being that closures were the most sensible option. Using data from the German live music survey (n = 686) and linear regression modelling, this article analyses the factors influencing the expected duration until insolvency. We show that the continuous financial support provided by the state extended the expected time to insolvency, as did the number of actors and initiatives using venues on a regular basis. On the other hand, operators with market venues, venues for lease and venues in big cities had more pessimistic expectations. The results demonstrate the safeguarding function of state support and diverse live music networks in times of crisis and bear important implications for the promotion of resilient live music ecologies.
Debate regarding how to conduct digital anthropology is currently contested, with two primary methodologies emerging: researchers who conduct projects wholly in cyberspace, and those who look at the use of digital technologies by their informants, contextualised in the offline world. This paper suggests a third way, arguing that immersive cohabitation is possible where online and offline fieldsites are viewed as part of a larger blended field. This paper builds on two years’ ethnographic fieldwork with Instagram to call for immersive cohabitation as a new method to be considered by digital anthropologists and ethnographers. Further to this blended approach, this paper argues for a move beyond participant observation to working as observing participants in the virtual. This dual approach restructures current anthropological methods for digital working to enhance the quality and depth of data collection whilst ensuring the continued currency of the anthropologist in a rapidly modernising and increasingly digitised world.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy is the first thorough analysis of how policy frames the behavior of audiences, industries, and governments in the production and consumption of popular music. Covering a range of industrial and national contexts, this collection assesses how music policy has become an important arm of government, and a contentious arena of global debate across areas of cultural trade, intellectual property, and mediacultural content. It brings together a diverse range of researchers to reveal how histories of music policy development continue to inform contemporary policy and industry practice. The Handbook maps individual nation case studies with detailed assessment of music industry sectors. Drawing on international experts, the volume offers insight into global debates about popular music within broader social, economic, and geopolitical contexts.
Music festivals offer a valuable glimpse into the state of the current musical landscape. Through them we can follow the career trajectories of particular artists, spot genre trends and divergences, identify connections and differences, and make sense of emerging scenes. Equally, music festivals lay bare the continued inequalities that exist; inclusions and absences are starkly visible in festival line-ups, and marketing and communications provide inspiration for public debate and the fuel for change. For scholars, festivals offer a context through which to examine the complex politics of music, condensed into a specific time and place yet engaging with global trends and debates, with international artists and audiences, with the past and the future, all within the economic and social context of the music industries. From spring 2020, we could clearly plot through music festivals the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on live music as we have previously known it, the government-driven lockdowns and social distancing regulations bringing an abrupt halt to live performance and threatening the existence of many music festivals. This period of disruption extended also to the outreach, education, artist development, fundraising, partnership working, and overall strategies of festival teams, to include festival-driven and global attempts to address significant issues relating to access and diversity within the music industries. This article explores gender politics from the stage of UK jazz festivals and considers the momentum of gender-focused initiatives during a period of international crisis.
This thesis examines how recording artists and professionals understood the impact of music streaming services in the Australian market between 2017 and 2018. During this period, services such as Spotify and Apple Music emerged as the largest generators of recording revenue for copyright holders following years of rapid global growth. This coincided with an increasing popularity of curated playlists and automated recommendation features, as well as persistent media narratives positioning streaming as economically unfair and/or culturally harmful to popular music. Drawing on twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with Australian musicians and music business professionals, this thesis explores how participants in the music industries understood and responded to the new affordances of music streaming interfaces, the usage data and other metrics generated by these services, and the role these services play within the commercial circulation of recordings.
This thesis finds that during these key years of transition to streaming for the Australian recording industry, specific areas of practice became highly interdependent with streaming services. However, there was little evidence of 'producing for the platform.' Participants described their roles in the music industries as artists, producers, and professionals who work together with interdependent firms and agents to circulate music. Streaming services were positioned as information technology or media firms extending prior functions of radio and retail, rather than as co-producers of musical experience commodities, new versions of record labels, or as 'music companies.' This separation between (creative) production and (mundane) distribution by streaming services reflects boundary disputes over art and commerce, as well as territorial concerns over who are the legitimate producers of popular music. The research finds that participants adjusted their distribution strategies to suit the new environment of streaming services; however, optimising musical production specifically for streaming services was considered inauthentic.
My thesis locates these articulations of industry practice within current debates in music industries research, and related fields including digital media studies, popular music studies, media industry studies, sociology, and cultural economics. I show how current debates about music streaming relate to larger concerns about autonomy in cultural production. The thesis reveals specific areas of industry practice where technological change was embraced, and where existing logics of autonomy were defended. By analysing these understandings of technological change during a period of considerable industry volatility, the thesis seeks to recognise, acknowledge, and contribute to improving the conditions under which musicians and professionals in the music industries derive livelihoods from the creation and circulation of music.
Focusing on youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves, Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. She portrays club cultures as "taste cultures" brought together by micro-media like flyers and listings, transformed into self-conscious "subcultures" by such niche media as the music and style press, and sometimes recast as "movements" with the aid of such mass media as tabloid newspaper front pages. She also traces changes in the recording medium from a marginal entertainment in the 50s to the clubs and raves of the 90s.
Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term "subcultural capital" to make sense of distinctions made by "cool" youth, noting particularly their disparagement of the "mainstream" against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Well supported with case studies, readable, and innovative, Club Cultures will become a key text in cultural and media studies and in the sociology of culture.
COVID-19 has presented many challenges to the music industry and to artists who rely on live music not only as a source of revenue but also as an integral part of their release strategy and audience engagement. It is important to examine the modalities of artistic expression when faced with a new “socially distant” paradigm. This article describes how, while many of the platforms used by independent artists have been in place for years, the COVID pandemic is promoting further disruptive innovation from a technological perspective to meet consumer demand and a deeper and more engaging method of expression cultivated by artists when working remotely from their audience.
This article focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural and creative sectors (CCSs) in Germany from March to the end of July 2020. It reviews the responses by Germany (federal, state and city level), grouped into three phases. The country has made explicit reference to the importance of arts and culture in the crisis. Germany has a high level of arts and culture funding, but in the last years the cultural and creative scene has changed. The article looks at these changes and reviews state responses as well as new initiatives from the cultural sector itself. Against this background, some tentative conclusions, with an eye on the near future, are made.
The 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic has greatly impacted societies around the world, where governmental strategies to curb and control the outbreak have resulted in citizens being unable to attend public businesses and spaces. For musicians who rely on touring as a dominant part of their income, the pandemic has had a hugely negative effect on their finances since they can no longer play face-to-face shows. However, a number of artists have turned to digital media to remedy this, performing online to audiences via Web 2.0 platforms. To better understand this cultural phenomenon, the article introduces the concept of portal shows that employ a converge between traditional live gigs, screen media and new media technologies. Analysing the textual, affective, performative and economic dynamics of portal shows, the article examines three differing case studies: Code Orange’s album release show on Twitch.TV, Beach Slang’s acoustic performance on StageIt and Delta Sleep’s in-store show on Instagram. In doing so, the article argues portal shows offer novel and nuanced ways artists and audiences can engage with one another through spatial convergence afforded by video streaming technologies and digital interfaces. Such live events also offer just-in-time fan engagement but does so within a digital transcultural remit, aiding the support of virtual scenes. As a result, the article expands on what is considered pandemic media and subsequent audience affective registers and enriches the study of the music industry’s engagement with digital media and wider convergence cultures more generally.
This article discusses Spotify’s approach to music recommendation as dataficationof listening. It discusses the hybrid types of music recommendation that Spotifypresents to users. The article explores how datafication is connected to Spotify’spush for the personalization and contextualization of music recommendationsbased on a combination of the cultural knowledge found in editorial curation andthe potential for large-scale personalization found in algorithmic curation. Thearticle draws on the concept of ubiquitous music and other understandings ofthe affective and functional aspects of music listening as an everyday practice toreflect upon how Spotify’s approach to datafication of listening potentially leads itto prioritize music recommendations that entice users to engage in inattentive andcontinuous listening. In extension to this, the article seeks to contribute with knowledgeabout how the datafication of listening potentially shapes listening practicesand conceptions of relevance and quality in music recommendation.
This paper argues that the crisis sweeping over the Australian cultural sector as a result of COVID-19 presents an existential threat to current (“normal science”) methods of evaluation, and to instrumental, predominantly economic, understandings of value. Outlining ways the concept of value is changing, we respond to Mariana Mazzucato’s call to go “from public goods to public value” in considering the role of government policy in key sectors of society. We note the broader approach to value called for by a range of mainstream economists and provide three recent examples of challenges to existing evaluation methods in the Australian cultural sector. In conclusion, we touch on the essential features of a re-constructed category of public value and the implications for value research. During COVID-19, the public role of arts and culture has become self-evident. The challenge is to match this realization with a new understanding of their public value.
The objective of this research is to addresses the effects of digital transformation on value creation through the study of technology entrepreneurship and technological market expansion. This is particularly important since both of these concepts are part of the dynamic capabilities that help in embracing digital innovation at a national level. Relevant data from 28 European countries representing development indicators and ease of doing business over a timeframe of 7 years from 2009 to 2015 were analysed to formulate and investigate a new perspective of digital entrepreneurship driven by the concepts of digital transformation and entrepreneurship. To do this, digital transformation has been broken into three categories, namely technology readiness (e.g. ICT investments), digital technology exploration (e.g. research and development) and digital technology exploitation (e.g. patents and trademarks). This research identifies several significant relationships between such constructs, which contribute to the literature and provide key implications for business management and practitioners.
In an increasingly globalised world, economic and cultural imperatives can be seen as two of the most powerful forces shaping human behaviour. This book considers the relationship between economics and culture both as areas of intellectual discourse, and as systems of societal organisation. Adopting a broad definition of culture, it explores the economic dimensions of culture, and the cultural context of economics. The book is built on a foundation of value theory, developing the twin notions of economic and cultural value as underlying principles for integrating the two fields. Ideas of cultural capital and sustainability are discussed, especially as means of analysing the particular problems of cultural heritage, drawing parallels with the treatment of natural capital in ecological economics. The book goes on to discuss the economics of creativity in the production of cultural goods and services; culture in economic development; the cultural industries; and cultural policy.
This book, which builds on a three-year immersive ethnographic study, argues that what scene participants do and say within the northern soul scene constitutes a claim to belong. For younger members, making claims to belong is problematic in a scene where dominant notions of authenticity held by insiders are rooted in a particular past: the places, people, events, and soundscapes of particular venues during the 1970s. In order to engage with this past, young men and women participate in a range of discursive practices. This book argues that these practices, and the ways they intersect and deviate from dominant notions of authenticity, represent shared and individual negotiations of the 'true soulie'. In doing so, it reveals the rich experiences of the younger generation of this multigenerational music scene, and the ways they establish a claim to belong to a scene first formed before they were born.
The relationship between popular music and consumer brands has never been so cosy. Product placement abounds in music videos, popular music provides the soundtrack to countless commercials, social media platforms offer musicians tools for perpetual promotion, and corporate-sponsored competitions lure aspiring musicians to vie for exposure. Activities that once attracted charges of ‘selling out’ are now considered savvy, or even ordinary, strategies for artists to be heard and make a living. What forces have encouraged musicians to become willing partners of consumer brands? At what cost? And how do changes in popular music culture reflect broader trends of commercialization?
Selling Out traces the evolution of ‘selling out’ debates in popular music culture and considers what might be lost when the boundary between culture and commerce is dismissed as a relic.
What “live music” means for one generation or culture does not necessarily mean “live” for another. This book examines how changes in economy, culture, and technology pertaining to post-digital times – most importantly drops in recording revenues – affect production, performance, and reception of live music. Considering established examples of live music, such as music festivals, alongside less obvious and hybridised forms, including live streaming and holograms, the book examines whether new forms stand the test of “live authenticity” for their audiences. It also speculates how live music might develop in the future, its relationship to recorded music and mediated performance, and how it will affect dominant business models in the popular music industry.
What “live music” means for one generation or culture does not necessarily mean “live” for another. This book examines how changes in economy, culture, and technology pertaining to post-digital times – most importantly drops in recording revenues – affect production, performance, and reception of live music. Considering established examples of live music, such as music festivals, alongside less obvious and hybridised forms, including live streaming and holograms, the book examines whether new forms stand the test of “live authenticity” for their audiences. It also speculates how live music might develop in the future, its relationship to recorded music and mediated performance, and how it will affect dominant business models in the popular music industry.