[csaa-forum] MIA Call for Papers: Popular Music: Networks, Industries, and Spaces

[Shane Homan]

Media International Australia incorporating Culture & Policy

Call for Papers: Popular Music: Networks, Industries, and Spaces

Theme Editors: 
Shane Homan (University of Newcastle)  
Chris Gibson (University of Wollongong)

This issue invites examination of the various global changes in technology, production and consumption in the popular music industries within Australia, as the traditional means of pop marketing, distribution and consumption fade. Heavily stylised television talent programs (e.g. Australian Idol) have reinvigorated the teen market and invite a re-examination of music nostalgia and contemporary discourses of stardom. Radio is another media form with increasingly sharp divisions in youth and baby boomer formatting, where community radio has become important for revealing new music sub-genres and acts.  Increasingly sophisticated models of digital downloading continue to challenge industry models of consumption, with various effects upon the nature of relationships between recording company, musician and fan. Copyright structures are also changing in an era where mobile phone ring tone revenue outstrips that of sales of CD singles. 

At the same time, the sites and practices of working in music are changing. The above technological and demographic changes have altered musicians' income sources and where production, performances and marketing take place. Musicians are increasingly taking on responsibilities as producers, sound engineers, and sometimes graphic designers, website managers and event promoters. All the while, musicians are reconfiguring how to make money from music, earn a living and continue to pay their rent - an important issue given the increasing now that Australian cities have become increasingly expensive in which to live. 

The issue would also seek to examine battles about copyright and distribution within the framework of current federal government policies on intellectual property, popular music funding and trade agreements; and the stances of key stakeholder groups such as ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association). Possible topics include:

* Copyright: changing structures of intellectual property mechanisms; income shifts
* Radio & TV: new forms of youth and baby boomer networks; different music formats & ownership structures
* Digital consumption: the legal and consumer implications of continuing shifts to forms of digital consumption
* Recording/live music structures: the changing conditions of labour networks, creative processes, sites
* Musical work: sources of income; multi-skilling and income cross-subsidisation
* Cultural policy: Australian music and the FTA; discourses of national identity; funding controversies

The editors would welcome papers on these or any other related topics of up to 5000 words. Prospective contributors should send an abstract of 200-300 words to Shane Homan (Shane.Homan at newcastle.edu.au) or Chris Gibson (cgibson at uow.edu.au). The deadline for abstract submissions is 1 July 2006, with full articles due by 20 November 2006.  All submissions will be peer reviewed.  


Dr Shane Homan
Cultural Institutions & Practices Research Centre
School of Humanities & Social Sciences
University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
Australia
Ph: 61 - 2 - 4921 6787
Shane.Homan at newcastle.edu.au
fax: 61 - 2 - 4921 7402

Reviews Editor, Perfect Beat:
the pacific journal of research into contemporary music & popular culture