interactivecultures

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We’ve been increasingly interested in the idea of ‘Music As Culture’ in the past few months. I’ve presented under that banner at a couple of conferences and events in London and Berlin recently, and Jez has been hard at work developing some projects on that topic.

The central idea is very simple: that most of the discussions and many of the important decisions being made today around popular music, copyright and online participation are from the perspective of music as a primarily commercial enterprise.

In fact, to read the newspapers and blogs, and to attend the music industry conferences, you would be forgiven for thinking that music itself has failed, because it is no longer as profitable as it once was.

But music is not just commerce. It is an important part of our culture, and we’re interested in the ways in which that is manifest – and in particular, the consequences of overlooking that very important point.

So we’ve launched MusicAsCulture.org. It’s a place to bring together projects that highlight this very important point. It’s not an organisation as such, and nor is it a body with a specific political agenda. It’s an umbrella under which we can explore and discuss ideas and issues around popular music, archives, cities, scenes and creativity.

Live, Loud and Local
We’re launching MusicAsCulture.org with a very special project. Here in Birmingham, as with many places elsewhere, heritage music venues are in danger of closure or losing their live music licence because of issues of noise. Areas that were once not residential now have tenants, and the clash between apartment dwellers and local music venues has demanded a response at a policy level.

From the Birmingham Post:
Digbeth Pub The Rainbow Facing Closure After Noise Complaints

And Pete Ashton predicts a riot.

UB40 step in
Brian Travers from the band UB40 approached us to discuss ways in which we might collaborate around this issue – and on November 3rd, the band will play a one-off gig at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth to raise money for a new roof on the building, in an attempt to reduce outside noise.

Brian and the band believe that live, local music is vital to the city and its cultural life. Their performance at the Rainbow serves to draw attention to this issue.

Under the Music As Culture banner, we’re bringing together a group of interested people to help document and communicate this effort, using all of the tools of the digital age, and some old-school ones as well. We believe these conversations and debates are important ones, and it’s gratifying that such an incredibly successful international act such as UB40 are so involved and interested in their local community and the ongoing creative lifeblood of their hometown.

Follow the UB40 Campaign Live, Loud and Local at Music As Culture here – and look for more projects coming soon.

Goldsmith University MA students Nicolle Smith and Stefan Peters have just finished work on a short web-documentary series called Broken Record.

They interviewed me for the series, and there’s a lot of stuff in here that is pertains to my Music As Culture interests and the Deleting Music book as much as it does to the general tone of what I research and discuss as part of the Interactive Cultures team at BCU, and what I usually write about on New Music Strategies.

The series is definitely worth watching, and features some good insight from some interesting people from different parts of the British digital music world – and it’s presented for your entertainment below.

Share and enjoy.

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Andrew Dubber & Jez Collins spoke at Open Music Media London on the subject of “Music as Culture“.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:38 — 34.2MB)

I attended an event in Copenhagen back in March this year. It was organised by Jazz Danmark, a government funded body whose role it is to promote and foster Danish jazz. My keynote was about how musicians could use the opportunities of the internet, and it seemed to go down reasonably well.

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Representatives from the Interactive Cultures team are at IASPM in Liverpool on the week of the 13th to the 17th of July. If you’re going to be there too, please find us and track us down. We’ll be around most of the week, so there’s a good chance you’ll meet Tim, Jez, Dubber (that’s me), Simon and Paul.

And there’s something in particular we want to talk about.

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Steve, Amran, Abi, Stef & Caro in a church hall in Salford

This is the audio recording of the panel session I chaired at Un-Convention in Manchester last month. It was about music that falls outside the indie rock band tradition you’d normally expect represented at these sorts of events. I wanted to know if there were any lessons that could be drawn from outside the margins.

Some really amazing and insightful stuff from Stef Lewandowski, Steve Lawson, Amran Ellahi, Abigail Seabrook, and Caroline Churchill.

You can listen to all of the panel sessions at the Un-Convention Soundcloud page.

Many thanks to Jon Bounds for recording and then uploading the video.

Nick Webber, Jez Collins, Andrew Dubber, talk music as culture at Un-Convention Salford

We recently attended Un-Convention Salford 2009. Organised by AHRC KTF partner Fat Northener, Un-convention is a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies. Born in 2008 as an alternative to Manchester’s mainstream In The City event, it has already inspired Un-Conventions in Belfast and Swansea and future events in Glasgow, London, Barcelona and Reykjavík. This year’s UK national event in Salford featured a range of key musicians, bands and industry personnel.

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I’m writing a book called Deleting Music. It’s about the music industries and intellectual property in the digital age.

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An Invitation to discuss at Un-Convention Manchester, 4th – 6th June 2009

Recently an organisation called Featured Artists Coalition was formed to give a lobbying voice to performing artists wishing to protect and advance their rights in the music industries. We find this a positive, admirable and understandable move for musicians.

We believe that most musicians create primarily for artistic and cultural reasons, and that while the commercial benefits are critically important (and we do understand the imperative for music to create economic reward), this is not the purpose of music. Moreover, music as culture is not represented at any policy level and so important decisions are being made without consideration for the cultural aspect of music itself. Read the rest of this entry »