Napster, 15 years on: Rethinking Digital Music Distribution

Call for articles
Napster, 15 years on: Rethinking Digital Music Distribution
First Monday
Guest editors: Raphaël Nowak (Griffith University, Australia) and Andrew Whelan (University of Wollongong, Australia)

2014 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the release of the peer-to-peer application Napster. Developed by a student, Shawn Fanning, with the help of his friend Shawn Parker and uncle John Fanning, Napster established music downloading as a mass phenomenon. By 2001, 50 million users had downloaded content with Napster. Many other applications followed – Gnutella, Kazaa, LimeWire, eMule, Soulseek, BitTorrent, among others – further developing and entrenching p2p technology. Continue reading

4th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference 2014

Call for papers
4th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference 2014
College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
8-9 August 2014

Organized by:
Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group (IAPMS group)

College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai, Thailand

We are pleased to announce the 4th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference, which will take place on 8-9 August 2014 in Chiang Mai, in collaboration with College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Following the first conference in Osaka in 2008, the second conference in Hong Kong in 2010, and the third conference in Taipei in 2012, we move our next meeting to Thailand—hub of vibrant South-East Asian popular music and music industry. Continue reading

Rhythm Changes: Jazz Beyond Borders

Call for papers
Rhythm Changes: Jazz Beyond Borders
4-7 September 2014
Conservatory of Amsterdam

Jazz Beyond Borders (and: Beyond the Borders of Jazz) seeks to critically explore how borders – real and imagined – have shaped, and continue to shape, debates about jazz. Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities sought to question traditional ways of understanding and articulating jazz history, and the concept of moving beyond borders – whether geographical or aesthetic – has played a key role in the project’s research strategy. Borders can be multifaceted and fluid, from geographical boundaries, to disciplinary fields, there can be theoretical or institutional borders, which permeate discourses relating to the cultural, social, political, national and ethnic as well as artistic, performative, canonical, aesthetic, stylistic and genre-related understandings of jazz. Because of the music’s inherent hybridity, jazz provides an excellent lens through which such borders, and border-policing processes, can be questioned and analysed. The music is ideally placed to think about the dividing lines between, for instance, academia and journalism, popular and art music, ‘new jazz studies’ and ‘traditional musicology’, the sonic and the visual, and so forth. Continue reading

MA in Popular Music and Culture

MA in Popular Music and Culture
Jointly offered by the Don Wright Faculty of Music and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University (University of Western Ontario)
Canada

What is it?

A pioneering, innovative, and interdisciplinary MA degree program for students who want to explore any and all facets of popular music by combining cultural and creative approaches. This cross-disciplinary degree melds critical media study and cultural theory with cutting-edge explorations of recording practice and production. Continue reading

Anthropology of Music and Related Practices

Call for papers
Anthropology of Music, Popular Music Scenes, Performance Practices and Challenges of the Present
IUAES Intercongress
Japan
15-18 May 2014
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences

This is an invitation to attend the panel on anthropology of music at the forthcoming IUAES Intercongress in Japan 15-18 May 2014. A very broad title of the panel is aimed to bring together anthropologists who would find interest in establishing the commission for anthropology of music and related performative practices in the frame of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Continue reading

Popular Music Studies Research Group Huddersfield University

Launch of the Popular Music Studies Research Group
15 January 2014
1.15pm Phipps Recital Hall (CAM2/06) in the CAB (Combined Arts Building)
University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH

The meeting will include research presentations from Prof. Philip Tagg (Visiting Research Professor at the University of Huddersfield), Prof. Derek Scott (Professor of Critical Musicology at the University of Leeds) and Dr. Simon Zagorski-Thomas (Reader at the London College of Music), who will be discussing their current research. Continue reading

The Languages of Popular Music

Call for papers
The Languages of Popular Music: Communicating Regional Musics in a Globalized World
29 September-2 October 2014
University of Osnabrueck, Germany
www.aspm-online.de

Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik e.V. (ASPM) and the University of Osnabrueck are inviting scholars of all disciplines studying popular music to submit proposals for the international conference “The Languages of Popular Music: Communicating Regional Musics in a Globalized World”. The conference will take place at the Institute for Musicology and Music Education, University of Osnabrueck, Germany, from 29 September to 2 October 2014. Continue reading

9th ARP Conference

9th Art of Record Production Conference
Hosted by Stan Hawkins, Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen and Anne Danielsen
University of Oslo
4-6 December 2014
www.artofrecordproduction.com

A call for papers will be circulated early January 2014.

Confirmed industry keynote speaker is Stargate:

Stargate, composed of Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen, has worked with some of the most influential names in music over the past decade, including Rihanna, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Jay Z and many more. Their melodies and hooks are unmistakable and have produced some of the biggest songs of today, including 10 Billboard #1 hits, among them “Diamonds”, “Rude Boy”, “Only Girl (In The World)”, “Black&Yellow”, “What’s My Name” and “Firework”. The team has received two Grammy awards, ASCAP Songwriters of the Year, an Ivor Novello Award and Rolling Stone Hitmakers of the Year. They have lectured at University of Southern California, Museum of Modern Art in New York City and NYU.

A special session with sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug is also confirmed:

Kongshaug is one of the world’s most renowned studio engineers and the owner of Rainbow Studio in Oslo. He has recorded more than 700 albums for the label ECM in cooperation with producer Manfred Eicher and has worked with, among others, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, Jan Garbarek, Ornette Coleman and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Performance Studies Program at Texas A&M

Performance Studies Program at Texas A&M
Accepting MA Student Applications
Deadline: 15 January 2014

The Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University is accepting applications for the Master of Arts degree in Performance Studies. Graduate Assistantships, which include tuition, healthcare benefits, and a monthly stipend, are available for qualified students. Our students and faculty are committed to the ethnographic study of vernacular culture and the integration of practice and research. Continue reading

AHRC Studentships

AHRC Studentships
SWW Training Partnership‏
School of Music
Cardiff University

The School of Music at Cardiff University is delighted to invite AHRC studentship applications as part of the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW DTP). The consortium, whose 8 members include our partner Music departments at Bath Spa, Bristol and Southampton, has secured 200 studentships to be disbursed over 5 years. Students within the DTP are based in a single department, but the consortium works on the principle of collaborative supervision and is also working in partnership with major arts and culture organisations both in the UK and abroad. Continue reading