Making live music count:The UK live music census

In 2017 we conducted the first-ever nationwide live music census, allowing for unprecedented levels of detailed, comparable data on the live music cultures of different localities. Live music censuses have been increasingly used in recent years (e.g. Melbourne, Edinburgh, Bristol) to illustrate the value of music to policymakers. This has coincided with challenging times for urban live music venues, particularly small venues and clubs. We present key census findings here, reflecting on how local contexts both shape the census process and may be informed by it, and on the growth of the idea of “Music Cities” to inform policy

Discourse, justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?

Digitization and the internet have posed an acute economic challenge to rights holders in the cultural industries. Faced with a threat to their form of capital accumulation from copyright infringement, rights holders have used discourse strategically in order to try and legitimate and strengthen their position in the digital copyright debate with governments and media users. In so doing, they have appealed to general justificatory principles – about what is good, right, and just – that provide some scope for opposition and critique, as other groups contest their interpretation of these principles and the evidence used to support them. In this article, we address the relative lack of academic attention paid to the role of discourse in copyright debates by analysing user-directed marketing campaigns and submissions to UK government policy consultations. We show how legitimacy claims are justified and critiqued, and conclude that amid these debates rests some hope of achieving a more legitimate policy resolution to the copyright wars – or at least the possibility of beginning a more constructive dialogue

Cultural value and cultural policy:Some evidence from the world of live music

This article considers live music policy in relation to wider debates on the cultural (as opposed to instrumental) value of the arts. The findings are based on research into amateur/enthusiast, state-funded and commercial concerts across a range of genres – classical, traditional folk, jazz, singer–songwriter and indie – using the Edinburgh Queen’s Hall venue as a case study. We argue that (1) articulations of the cultural or intrinsic value of live music across genres tend to lapse back into descriptions of instrumental value; (2) although explanations vary from audiences, artists and promoters as to why they participate in live music, they also share certain characteristics across genres and sometimes challenge stereotypes about genre-specific behaviours; and (3) there are lessons to be learned for live music policy from examining a venue that plays host to a range of genres and promotional practices

'From mosh pit to posh pit': Festival imagery in the context of the boutique festival

This paper addresses market-based cultural production in the context of the UK festival field, with a focus on the framing of the festival experience through anticipation. In particular, boutique festivals are discussed as examples of a contemporary cultural ?product category? which has emerged and proliferated in the last decade. Through discourse analysis of media representations of boutique festivals, we situate the boutique festival in a broader sociocultural discourse of agency and choice, which makes it meaningful and desirable, and outline the type of consumer it is meant to attract. For the contemporary consumer, the boutique festival is presented as an anticipated experience based on countercultural festival imagery, while simultaneously framing cultural participation through consumption. The paper contributes to a wider debate on the construction of the consumer in the cultural economy

Copy rights: The politics of copying and creativity

This article analyses the politics of copyright and copying. Copyright is an increasingly important driver of the modern economy, but this does not exhaust its significance. It matters, we argue, not just for the distribution of rewards and resources in the creative industries, but as a site within which established political concerns – collective and individual interests and identities - are articulated and negotiated, and within which notions of ‘originality’, ‘creativity’ and ‘copying’ are politically constituted. Set against the background of the increasing economic value attributed to the creative industries, the impact of digitalization on them, and the European Union’s Digital Single Market strategy, the article reveals how copyright policy, and the underlying assumptions about ‘copying’ and ‘creativity’, express (often unexamined) political values and ideologies. Drawing on a close reading of policy statements, official reports, court cases, and interviews with stakeholders, we explore the multiple political aspects of copyright, showing how copyright policy operates to privilege particular interests and practices, and to acknowledge only specific forms of creative endeavour

Musical giftedness in the primary school Guidelines for teachers

1.25SIGLELD:83/15093(Musical) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

IAML(UK) sets survey Sets of music and drama on loan during September/October 1997

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:98/03795 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Live Concert Performance: An Ecological Approach

For the last decade we have been engaged in the study of the history, economics, and sociology of live music in Britain. In this article we will consider the value of “ecology” as an analytic concept (rather than just a buzzword) and compare an ecological account of the setting in which music happens to the use of previous spatial metaphors, from Durkheim’s milieus to Straw’s scenes. To illustrate our argument, we present case studies of three Scottish concerts: one in a small-scale venue (Glasgow’s King Tut’s), one in a mid-size venue (Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall), and one in a large-scale venue, the 12,000-seater SSE Hydro

The environmental sustainability of the music industries

No abstract available