The Influence of Dirty Pool on the Australian Live Music Industry: A Case Study of Boy & Bear

Author(s):  
Guy Morrow
Keyword(s):  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliot Tretter

In this paper I draw on a body of scholarship that focuses on how a central feature of capitalist urbanization is the willingness of firms to participate in a form of rent-seeking that exploits geographical differences. I then extend this analysis to the cultural economy. I use as my case study Austin, Texas, which since 1991 has branded itself the “Live Music Capital of the World.” The existing literature on Austin's urban entrepreneurial strategy, reflecting the dominant trends in urban and economic geography, focuses on how this branding campaign cultivated and exploited the geographical particularities of the city's cultural infrastructure. However, I contend that the changes brought about within the music industry influenced the success of this effort. In particular, I argue that the effectiveness of this branding effort is related to the changing value of live music within the music industry and especially the elevated position of music promoters (those firms that rely on live music as an essential part of their business). As this paper shows, the value of the city's branding efforts is related to the industrial success of two of the music industry's mid-sized promotional firms, SXSW Inc. and C3 Presents. These two Austin-based firms trade on its live-music brand but also, perhaps unwittingly, receive an extra-economic benefit that amplifies this reputation. In particular, I will focus on how a special music event, SXSW, and a music festival, Austin City Limits, help reinforce the image that has been enhanced by the city's branding efforts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110243
Author(s):  
Orlando Woods

This paper explores how digital media can cause the representational value of rap artists to be transformed. Ubiquitous access to digital recording, production and distribution technologies grants rappers an unprecedented degree of representational autonomy, meaning they are able to integrate the street aesthetic into their lyrics and music videos, and thus create content that offers a more authentic representation of their (past) lives. Sidestepping the mainstream music industry, the digital enables these integrations and bolsters the hypercapitalist impulses of content creators. I illustrate these ideas through a case study of grime artist, Bugzy Malone, who uses his music to narrate his evolution from a life of criminality (selling drugs on the street; a ‘roadman’), to one in which his representational value is recognised by commercial brands who want to partner with him because of his street credibility (collecting ‘royalties’). Bugzy Malone’s commercial success is not predicated on a departure from his criminal past, but the deliberate foregrounding of it as a marker of authenticity. The representational autonomy provided by digital media can therefore enable artists to maximise the affective cachet of the once-criminal self.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110221
Author(s):  
Tamas Tofalvy ◽  
Júlia Koltai

In this article, we argue that offline inequalities, such as core–periphery relations of the music industry, are reproduced by streaming platforms. First, we offer an overview of the reproduction of inequalities and core–periphery dynamics in the music industry. Then we illustrate this through a small-scale network analysis case study of Hungarian metal bands’ connections on Spotify. We show that the primary determinant of a given band’s international connectedness in Spotify’s algorithmic ecosystem is their international label connections. Bands on international labels have more reciprocal international connections and are more likely to be recommended based on actual genre similarity. However, bands signed with local labels or self-published tend to have domestic connections and to be paired with other artists by Spotify’s recommendation system according to their country of origin.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy M. Belfi ◽  
David W. Samson ◽  
Jonathan Crane ◽  
Nicholas L. Schmidt

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the live music industry to an abrupt halt; subsequently, musicians are looking for ways to replicate the live concert experience virtually. The present study sought to investigate differences in aesthetic judgments of a live concert vs. a recorded concert, and whether these responses vary based on congruence between musical artist and piece. Participants (N = 32) made continuous ratings of their felt pleasure either during a live concert or while viewing an audiovisual recorded version of the same joint concert given by a university band and a United States Army band. Each band played two pieces: a United States patriotic piece (congruent with the army band) and a non-patriotic piece (congruent with the university band). Results indicate that, on average, participants reported more pleasure while listening to pieces that were congruent, which did not vary based on live vs. lab listening context: listeners preferred patriotic music when played by the army band and non-patriotic music when played by the university band. Overall, these results indicate that felt pleasure in response to music may vary based on listener expectations of the musical artist, such that listeners prefer musical pieces that “fit” with the particular artist. When considering implications for concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results indicate that listeners may experience similar degrees of pleasure even while viewing a recorded concert, suggesting that virtual concerts are a reasonable way to elicit pleasure from audiences when live performances are not possible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-161
Author(s):  
Karl Spracklen ◽  
Dave Robinson

Skipton, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, is an old mill town that has seen tourists flocking to it since the arrival of the railway in the 19th century. Like many other old mill towns in northern England, Skipton has lost those mills-as-factories and the workers in them—and has struggled to retain a sustainable local economy. At the same time, Skipton has become increasingly gentrified, and has become a focus for day visitors and tourists attracted by the beautiful countryside seen when Le Tour de France came through Yorkshire in 2014. In this article, we explore the area of Skipton, dubbed the Canal Quarter. We focus on the leisure spaces that have opened there as attempts to construct alternative, authentic experiences around the consumption of real ale, the performance of live music, and the curation of second-hand vinyl records. We have previously explored how these might be shown to be a space for Habermasian rationality. In this sequel, we use critical theory to show how the alternative, authentic space of vinyl, real ale, and live music has already been compromised by two conflicting hegemonic powers: the cooption of leisure into the economics of tourism and tourism policy, and the meaninglessness of cool capitalism and Bauman's consumer society.


Author(s):  
Theodoulos Theodoulou ◽  
Savvas Papagiannidis

In this paper, the authors adapt a value chain analysis framework used in the music industry and apply it to the television industry, in order to probe the television value creation and distribution mechanisms and examine how they were affected by technology. More specifically, they examine how viewers can effectively become producers by repositioning themselves in the value chain and the implications of such a shift. Their discussion takes place in the context of a case study, that of Current TV, in order to illustrate in practice the opportunities and implications for the content producers, the broadcasters, and the viewers themselves.


Author(s):  
Chia-Wen Tsai ◽  
Pei-Di Shen ◽  
Nien-En Chiang

In this newly competitive and dynamic knowledge economic era, knowledge becomes the most important capability for enterprises. As a part of the cultural enterprises, the music industry produces cultural products that are nonmaterial, aesthetic and expressive for audiences and consumers. The report on the artistic and cultural fields from the European Union illustrates that the importance of the creative industry increases day by day in recent years. However, the studies of intellectual capital and knowledge transfer mostly focused on the high-tech industries. In this study, the researchers adopted a case study to explore how the knowledge transfer among music band members and intellectual capital’s effect bands. Based on the interviews, the researchers found that human capital is the fundamental of a music band and organizational capital, and it influenced the transfer of human capital. The authors further discuss the implications for bands and the for music industry to promote knowledge transfer and build their intellectual capital.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-461
Author(s):  
Haekyung Um

This article explores the dynamics of transnational business collaboration between UK and Asian music companies, focusing on Liverpool Sound City in the United Kingdom, Modern Sky in China and Zandari Festa in South Korea. The specificities of their music business, the nature and motivation for partnership, the respective industry infrastructure and state cultural policies give shape to the outcome of their collaborations, which in turn influence their music products, events, artists and audiences. The complexity of their business transactions and interactions also tell us how the live music sector and its ecologies continue to evolve and reposition themselves in the fast-changing environments of the global music industry. In reflection of an increased transnationalisation and diversification of the global music industries, it is argued that more attention should be given to the transnational and translocal ecologies of live music studies.


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