From the late 1990s until today, China’s sound practice has been developing in an increasingly globalized socio-political-aesthetic milieu, receiving attentions and investments from the art world, music industry and cultural institutes, with nevertheless, its unique acoustic philosophy remaining silent. This book traces the history of sound practice from contemporary Chinese visual art back in the 1980s, to electronic music, which was introduced as a target of critique in the 1950s, to electronic instrument building fever in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and to the origins of both academic and nonacademic electronic and experimental music activities. This expansive tracing of sound in the arts resonates with another goal of this book, to understand sound and its artistic practice through notions informed by Chinese qi-cosmology and qi-philosophy, including notions of resonance, shanshui (mountains-waters), huanghu (elusiveness and evasiveness), and distributed monumentality and anti-monumentality. By turning back to deep history to learn about the meaning and function of sound and listening in ancient China, the book offers a refreshing understanding of the British sinologist Joseph Needham’s statement that “Chinese acoustics is acoustics of qi.” and expands existing conceptualization of sound art and contemporary music at large.

The music industries are fuelled by statistics: sales targets, breakeven points, success ratios, royalty splits, website hits, ticket revenues, listener figures, piracy abuses and big data. Statistics are of consequence. They influence the music that consumers get to hear, they determine the revenues of music makers, and they shape the policies of governments and legislators. Yet many of these statistics are generated by the music industries themselves, and their accuracy can be questioned. This original new book sets out to explore this shadowy terrain. While there are books that offer guidelines about how the music industries work, as well as critiques from academics about the policies of music companies, this is the first book that takes a sustained look at these subjects from a statistical angle. This is particularly significant as statistics have not just been used to explain the music industries, they are also essential to the ways that the industries work: they drive signing policy, contractual policy, copyright policy, economic policy and understandings of consumer behaviour. This edited collection provides the first in-depth examination of the use and abuse of statistics in the music industries. The international group of contributors are noted music business scholars and practitioners in the field. The book addresses five key areas in which numbers are employed: sales and awards; royalties and distribution; music piracy; music policy; and audiences and their uses of music. The authors address these subjects from a range of perspectives. Some of them test the veracity of this data and explore its tactical use by music businesses. Others are helping to generate these numbers: they are developing surveys and online projects and offer candid self-observations in this volume. There are also authors who have been subject to statistics; they deliver first-hand accounts of music industry reporting. The digital age is inherently numerical. Within the music industries this has prompted new ways of tracking the usage and recompense of music. In addition, it has generated new means of monitoring and engaging audience behaviour. It has also led to increased documentation of the trade. There is more reporting of the overall revenues of music industry sectors. There is also more engagement between industry and academia when it comes to conducting analyses and offering numerical recommendations to politicians. The aim of this collection is to expose the culture and politics of data. Music industry statistics are all-pervasive, yet because of this ubiquity they have been under-explored. This book provides new ways by which to learn music by numbers. A timely examination of how data and statistics are key to the music industries. Widely held industry assumptions are challenged with data from a variety of sources and in an engaging, lucid manner. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in how the music business uses and manipulates the data that digital technologies have made available. Primary readership will be among popular music academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students working in the fields of popular music studies, music business, media studies, cultural studies, sociology and creative industries. The book will also be of interest to people working within the music industries and to those whose work encounters industry statistics.

Songs from Sweden shows how Swedish songwriters and producers are the creative forces behind much of today's international pop music. As Ola Johansson reveals, the roots of this "music miracle" can be found in Sweden's culture, economy, and thriving music industry, concentrated in Stockholm. While Swedish writer-producers developed early global recognition for making commercially successful pop music, new Swedish writer-producers have continuously emerged during the last two decades. Global artists travel to Stockholm to negotiate, record, and co-write songs. At the same time, Swedish writer-producers are part of a global collaborative network that spans the world. In addition to concrete commercial accomplishments, the Swedish success is also a result of the acquisition of reputational capital gained through positive associations that the global music industry holds about Swedish music. Ultimately, pop songs from Sweden exhibit a form of cultural hybridity, drawing from both local and global cultural expressions.

At the height of his initial, turn-of-the-1990's infamy as the maraca-wielding dancer with 'Madchester' giants Happy Mondays, the pop-eyed Mark Berry, forever known to the world as Bez, was visibly a danger to society. He became the so-called Chemical Generation's bug-eyed pied piper, every weekend leading millions out to oblivion and beyond, as they adopted his E-gobbling party lifestyle. Neither an accomplished musician nor even a very good dancer, Bez was a prime candidate for fleeting celebrity, soon to sink into 'Where Are They Now?' obscurity. That, however, never happened, nor does it show any sign of happening. Through Black Grape, the second band he co-fronted with the Mondays' Shaun Ryder, and his ever-presence in the mass media, Bez's popularity has grown exponentially, his star rocketing ever upwards. When he bowled into Celebrity Big Brother in 2005, he ended up winning the series, as viewers came to understand his fundamental decency and sunny outlook. His adult life has been extraordinary: unbelievable scrapes with mortality, periods of financial ruin, mindfuck moments like when David Bowie genuflected before him, and enough narcotic-strewn hi-jinx to fill several more volumes of memoir. This is the story of a bad lad who has turned his life good, tracing his passage from early-thirty-something casualty to middle-aged politician, eco-warrior and bee-aficionado.

During its eight-year existence, from 1987 to 1995, Sarah Records was a modest underground success and, for the most part, a critical laughingstock in its native England--sneeringly dismissed as the sad, final repository for a fringe style of music (variously referred to as "indie-pop," "C86," "cutie" and "twee") whose moment had passed. Yet now, almost 20 years after its dissolution, Sarah is among the most passionately fetishized record labels of all time. Several of its releases sell for hundreds of dollars; devotees from London to Los Angeles to Tokyo hungrily seek out any information they can find about its poorly documented history; and countless new bands--some of them made up of people who weren't born when Sarah shut down--claim its bands as a major influence."Popkiss" will be the book that thousands of Sarah fans around the world have been waiting for. Drawn from dozens of exclusive interviews with members of the 30-plus bands that called the label home, as well as Sarah co-founders Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd, it will offer--for the first time anywhere--a deeply detailed account of the label's occasional triumphs and many tribulations, and its last laugh in posterity. "Popkiss" offers a vivid portrait of something that is likely gone forever: the record label as highly personalized aesthetic statement, whose very name is a trustworthy 'seal of quality' to its acolytes. Following the rise of the Internet and the collapse of the traditional music industry, the uncommonly intimate relationship Sarah engendered with its audience--not only through its music, but through its artwork, self-written fanzines and newsletters, and unorthodox business decisions--is an accomplishment no new label could duplicate today.

(Music Pro Guide Books & DVDs). Stop just using social media and learn how to promote with it with Social Media Promotions for Musicians . The book reveals a host of online insider tips and tricks that will help you gain more fans and followers, increase your views, and grow your ticket and merch sales. Social Media Promotions for Musicians shows artists, bands, engineers and producers the latest techniques and strategies to increase your online presence more effectively and efficiently than you ever thought possible. The book covers YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blogs, Pinterest, bookmarking sites, websites, and newsletters. You'll discover: * How to increase your online exposure to increase your fan base * How to have more time for creating by saving at least an hour every day on common social media operations * Exclusive promotional tips that boost your views and followers * How to uncover and develop your brand * The secret behind successful tweets and posts * Why a mailing list is the key to your ticket and merch sales

*AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 'BOOK OF THE WEEK'* 'Lip-lickingly, dance-around-the-living-room good... A smash hit' Observer 'Unflinching and heartwarming' - Adam Kay 'Tender, clever and as funny as it gets ... a heart-piercing joy' - Lauren Laverne 'An exceptional coming-of-age story [...] Pete Paphides may very well have the biggest heart in Britain' - Marina Hyde 'I ADORE this utterly wonderful coming-of-age memoir. Joyful, clever, and a bit heartbreaking' - Nina Stibbe __________ 'Do you sometimes feel like the music you're hearing is explaining your life to you?' When Pete's parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little bit of English. They opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green. The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about coin-operated machines, male banter and Britishness. Shy and introverted, Pete stopped speaking from age 4 to 7, and found refuge instead in the bittersweet embrace of pop songs, thanks to Top of the Pops and Dial-A-Disc. From Brotherhood of Man to UB40, from ABBA to The Police, music provided the safety net he needed to protect him from the tensions of his home life. It also helped him navigate his way around the challenges surrounding school, friendships and phobias such as visits to the barber, standing near tall buildings and Rod Hull and Emu. With every passing year, his guilty secret became more horrifying to him: his parents were Greek, but all the things that excited him were British. And the engine of that realisation? 'Sugar Baby Love', 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart', 'Tragedy', 'Silly Games', 'Going Underground', 'Come On Eileen', and every other irresistibly thrilling chart hit blaring out of the chip shop radio. Never have the trials and tribulations of growing up and the human need for a sense of belonging been so heart-breakingly and humorously depicted. *Listen along with Pete's BROKEN GREEK playlist on Spotify* 'Heartfelt, hilarious and beautifully written, Broken Greek is a childhood memoir like no other' - Cathy Newman 'So wonderfully written, such a light touch. Drenched in sentiment yet not in the least sentimental' - John Niven 'It's brilliant. Sad, really funny and beautifully written ... just fantastic' - Alexis Petridis 'A truly beautiful book' - James O'Brien 'Intoxicating' - Kirsty Wark 'Oh, how I love Pete Paphides and this book' - Daniel Finkelstein 'A balm in these times' David Nicholls 'Fantastic ... Can't recommend it highly enough' Tim Burgess

Description The music industry, as with most other media forms, is in the middle of a period of enormous transformation. Digital technologies have empowered producers and consumers of music - traditional ways of making and distributing music are under threat as musicians and their audiences embrace new opportunities, many of which bypass the incumbent middlemen. Whilst it is clear that the music industry is thriving, the traditional recording industry, dominated by a handful of multinational corporations is struggling to stay relevant. The changes are so dramatic that the term "Music 2.0" has become commonly used to delineate old and new business models and approaches. But the demise of the traditional music industry is overstating things - the reality is that (whilst their profits may be diminishing) they still dominate a multi-billion dollar marketplace and exercise unprecedented control over the star-making process. And, of course, they have the resources to be able to reinvent themselves. The actual future of music is a complex and contested one. This book aims to unpack that complexity, map the changes and explain the causes and motivations surrounding an industry undergoing change. It explores the world of popular music from three distinct perspectives. Firstly, it examines the new opportunities available to consumers of music - interrogating how the lines between production and consumption are blurring, creating fans who do much more than just listen to music. Secondly, it draws on interviews with a diverse range of musicians explaining their place in the brave new world and trying to articulate their newly defined roles. Finally, it examines the industry itself, and unpack the responses to current challenges from new and old players alike.

EThe Complete Singer-SongwriterE is the ultimate guide for the modern performer chock-full of tips tools and inspiration for both aspiring troubadours and those looking to take their craft and career to the next level. Author Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers draws on firsthand interviews with songwriting legends and rising stars; expert advice from managers agents lawyers and publishers; and his own experiences as a performing songwriter. He offers this invaluable companion for singer-songwriters on their journey from idea to song to the stage studio and beyond.THNew in the second edition:THU A songwriter's guide to chord progressionsTHU Understanding song form and rhymeTHU Dozens of songwriting games and exercisesTHU Essential info on copyrighting your songs music publishing and digital royaltiesTHU Online companion at completesingersongwriter.com with playlists and additional resourcesTHSongwriting tips and techniques from more than 100 artists including Joni Mitchell John Mayer Paul Simon Rosanne Cash Jewel Jeff Tweedy Ani DiFranco James Taylor John Fogerty Brandi Carlile Richard Thompson Jason Mraz Rodney Crowell Jerry Garcia Dar Williams and more.

If you dream about a career in the music industry, this book is for you. These practical strategies will help you to prepare for and land your dream job in the music business. Readers have used this book to educate and empower themselves and jumpstart successful music industry careers. You can, too! The 3rd edition includes new Career Tool Kit and Social Media Strategy. Inside you'll find: * Details on booming job prospects in digital music distribution and music licensing * Interviews with nine music industry professionals under 35 who discuss how they got their starts, plus what skills today's leading job candidates must possess * A resource directory of industry related job websites as well as U.S. and Canadian trade associations * Step-by-step guidance for developing a first rate resume and acing your interviews * Workshops to help you assess and develop your own personalized career tool kit * Strategies for industry networking, finding a mentor, and how to effectively use social media.

The Twelfth Edition of this powerhouse best-selling text maintains its tradition as the most comprehensive, up-to-date guide to the music industry in all of its diversity. Readers new to the music business and seasoned professionals alike will find David and Tim Baskerville's handbook the go-to source, regardless of their specialty within the music field. Music Business Handbook and Career Guide is ideal for introductory courses such as Introduction to the Music Business, Music and Media, and other survey courses as well as more specialized courses such as the record industry, music careers, artist management, and more. The fully updated Twelfth Edition includes a comprehensive discussion of the streaming revolution and its impact on all parts of the value chain, including composers, performing artists, publishers, and labels. The book also analyzes shifts in the competing platforms of consumption ranging from fast-shrinking physical formats and broadcasting to downloads and subscription services. This edition offers more vignettes than ever, illustrating how individuals in different industry roles advanced their careers, as well as how they've adjusted to the intertwining influences of technology, law, and culture.

There is a crisis facing music. The signs are everywhere, from the saturation of public space by tuneful trivia to the digital downloading controversy. Quantity has replaced quality. The number of units sold is now the criteria by which music is judged and high-gloss, mass-produced, low-content music is everywhere. You can't shop, eat, ride a bus or see a movie without hearing it as each day you are inundated with enticements to buy it. Like the replacement of essential nutriment by junk food, music lovers are expected to surrender their critical faculties and consume the phony McMusic that can be more effectively controlled and profitably sold than the genuine article.

Callahan unravels and elucidates the crises facing music as well as its liberatory potential. "The Trouble with Music" includes discussions of: technology and its effects on music making and listening; superabundance and the absence of critical thought; the development of radio; music criticism; copyright; the digital domain and the Internet; labor and music making; and the special relationships among words, dance, politics and music. A large segment of the general public seeks a relationship to music and an exceptional profit for those who own and control it. Callahan provides a means of evaluating music and a powerful critique of the music industry. Whether you whistle at work, sing in the shower or conduct concertos, this book will challenge and enhance how you think about music.

Includes introductions by musician and Dischord Records founder, Ian Mackaye; "Rock and Rap Confidential" editor, Dave Marsh; and an afterward by Boff, from the multimillion selling group Chumbawamba.

Mat Callahan has been a composer, musician, engineer and producer for 40 years.

Popular music scholars have long been interested in the connection between place and music. This collection brings together a number of key scholars in order to introduce readers to concepts and theories used to explore the relationships between place and music. An interdisciplinary volume, drawing from sociology, geography, ethnomusicology, media, cultural, and communication studies, this book covers a wide-range of topics germane to the production and consumption of place in popular music. Through considerations of changes in technology and the mediascape that have shaped the experience of popular music (vinyl, iPods, social media), the role of social difference and how it shapes sociomusical encounters (queer spaces, gendered and racialised spaces), as well as the construction and representations of place (musical tourism, city branding, urban mythologies), this is an up-to-the-moment overview of central discussions about place and music. The contributors explore a range of contexts, moving from the studio to the stage, the city to the suburb, the bedroom to festival, from nightclub to museum, with each entry highlighting the diverse and complex ways in which music and place are mutually constitutive.

Popular music in the twenty-first century is increasingly divided into niche markets. How do fans, musicians, and music industry executives define their markets' boundaries? What happens when musicians cross those boundaries? What can Christian music teach us about commercial popular music? In God Rock, Inc., Andrew Mall considers the aesthetic, commercial, ethical, and social boundaries of Christian popular music, from the late 1960s, when it emerged, through the 2010s. Drawing on ethnographic research, historical archives, interviews with music industry executives, and critical analyses of recordings, concerts, and music festival performances, Mall explores the tensions that have shaped this evolving market and frames broader questions about commerce, ethics, resistance, and crossover in music that defines itself as outside the mainstream.

This book provides rare insights into the difficult and complex dialogues between stakeholders within and outside the music industries in a time of transition. It builds on a series of recorded meetings in which key stakeholders discuss and assess options and considerations for the music industries' transition to a digital era. These talks were closed to the public and operated under the Chatham House Rule, which means that they involved a very different type of discussion from those held in public settings, panels or conferences. As such, the book offers a much more nuanced understanding of the industries' difficulties in adjusting to changing conditions, demonstrating the internal power-struggles and differences that make digital change so difficult. After presenting a theoretical framework for assessing digital change in the music industries, the author then provides his research findings, including quotes from the Kristiansand Roundtable Conference. Following from these findings, he develops three critical concepts that explain the nature as well as the problems of the music industries' adaptation process. In conclusion, he challenges the general definition of crisis in the music industries and contradicts the widely held view that digitalization is a case of vertical integration.

This book explores why widespread predictions of the radical transformation in the recording industry did not materialise. Although the growing revenue generated from streaming signals the recovery of the digital music business, it is important to ask to what extent is the current development a response to digital innovation. Hyojung Sun finds the answer in the detailed innovation process that has taken place since Napster. She reassesses the way digital music technologies were encultured in complex music valorisation processes and demonstrates how the industry has become reintermediated rather than disintermediated. This book offers a new understanding of digital disruption in the recording industry. It captures the complexity of the innovation processes that brought about technological development, which arose as a result of interaction across the circuit of the recording business - production, distribution, valorisation, and consumption. By offering a more sophisticated account than the prevailing dichotomy, the book exposes deterministic myths surrounding the radical transformation of the industry.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, explores the contemporary pop music scene in this little understood Southeast Asian country. Burma's Pop Music Industry is the first book to explore the contemporary pop music industry in a country that is little known or understood in the West. Based on years of fieldwork in Burma/Myanmar, Heather MacLachlan's work explores the ways in which aspiring musical artists are forging a place within the highly repressive social and political context that is Burma today. It deals sensitively with issues such as negotiating local and global styles,performance contexts and practices, and, more importantly, with ethical issues such as the anonymity of informants and the place of Western ethnomusicologists in countries outside the West. Drawn from interviews conducted from 2007 through 2009 with Burmese composers, performers, producers, concert promoters, journalists, recording engineers, radio station employees, music teachers, and censors in Yangon -- Burma's largest city and the locus of all pop music production -- Burma's Pop Music Industry represents a significant contribution both to popular music studies and to Southeast Asian studies. Heather MacLachlan is Assistant Professor of Music, University of Dayton.

To complete an album, a producer needs to know what goes into capturing great music and teasing out inspirational performances from artists. As a producer, you are guiding not only the music, but also the business and the technical aspects of an album. What Is Music Production? is a "guide to this guidance."
Formed from a blend of solid information extracted from detailed interviews, the book focuses on the process of music production, providing insight into how the producer guides this process and molds the final product.
Whether you are a student or just starting your professional career, What is Music Production? explains what you need to know-from working with artists, songs, pre-production, mixing, and mastering to the finance and budgeting-to glean a professional result. Combining the "how to" with online assets and interviews, this book arms you with vital insight into the business of being a music producer.

Pursuing the dream of a musical vocation-particularly in rock music-is typically regarded as an adolescent pipedream. Music is marked as an appropriate leisure activity, but one that should be discarded upon entering adulthood. How then do many men and women aspire to forge careers in music upon entering adulthood? In Destined for Greatness, sociologist Michael Ramirez examines the lives of forty-eight independent rock musicians who seek out such non-normative choices in a college town renowned for its music scene. He explores the rich life course trajectories of women and men to explore the extent to which pathways are structured to allow some, but not all, individuals to fashion careers in music worlds. Ramirez suggests a more nuanced understanding of factors that enable the pursuit of musical livelihoods well into adulthood.