Musical Sustainabilities

18–19 November 2024, Seinäjoki, Finland

The Seinäjoki Unit of the University of the Arts Helsinki is pleased to announce an international symposium on “musical sustainabilities.” As the Sustainable Development Goals issued by the United Nations attest, sustainability has become a wide-ranging issue globally. While originally linked to the maintenance of natural resources, it has evolved to cover social, economic and cultural issues. Concerning music, the most apparent of these relate to work, production and industry, consumption and live music, and communities and institutions.

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Transposition no 13: Music and right-wing movements

Call for papers, Transposition n°13 (2025): “Music and right-wing movements”
Edited by Júlia Donley, Lambert Dousson and Jason Julliot

The issue 13 of Transposition aims to provide an overview of the relationships between music and right-wing political movements in the contemporary world. 

Exploring and understanding a changing category

The political category of “right-wing” refers to a wide repertoire of practices and ideas whose boundaries are increasingly difficult to define: from the defense of free economic competition to the protection of cultural exceptions and national identities; from the demand for authority and security to the preservation of social order and traditional or religious values (Camus 2001; Faria Carvalho and Andrade De Oliveira Paiva 2022). A polymorphous phenomenon, the right-wing manifests its plasticity through the normalization of the extreme right, which, when not in power, manages to integrate its agenda into so-called moderate right-wing governments, and even the programs of certain left-wing parties, thereby blurring the boundaries and definitions of these political categories. Following these observations, researchers are working to understand the heterogeneity of political movements that identify themselves or that they identify as right-wing and prefer plurality to its unification (Bob 2012; Rydgen 2018; François 2022).

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Popular Music, Revival & Renewal: Histories, Cultures, Practices

CFP Special Issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/ccon20

Contributions are sought for a special issue of Continuum under the theme ‘Popular Music, Revival & Renewal: Histories, Cultures, Practices’ with guest editors Lauren Istvandity, Mengyu Luo, and John Tebbutt.

There is an unusual dynamic to be observed in current popular music: it is so deeply embedded in cultures of everyday life that pop’s legacies crucially shape how we perceive music and its subcultures. In the post pandemic digital society this is increasingly visible. If ‘pop will eat itself’, the spectacle of this feast is contemporary music itself. Here, the terms popular music, contemporary music and ‘pop’, refer in general to products of a global music industry that is as evident in Korea or China as it is in Australia or Europe. Popular music’s cyclic generation of creative product is often fuelled by a sense of ‘looking back’ even as it serves to capture sentiments of modern-day audiences. This is particularly evident in the campaign around Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ project, but it may also be found in the now de rigueur performances built around debut or iconic albums. These musical pasts continue to resonate in a range of cultural practices, however significant shifts in digital streaming, the value of material cultures, and patterns in artistic output and audience consumption raise critical questions about the role of a now extensive popular music history on the trends of pop music in the present.

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Special Issue of Rock Music Studies: Authenticity as Process

Guest-edited by Matthew Bannister (Wintec) and Nick Braae (Wintec) 

Submissions are invited for a special issue of Rock Music Studies on the topic of Authenticity as Process. Authenticity is never a fully accomplished fact—it depends on legitimating processes and is prey to time and change, to the assessments of different audiences, often arising out of a movement or oscillation between or via polarities, a journey of becoming. We are looking for contributions that examine various articulations of authenticating processes in the context of popular music. Authors may choose to engage with the prompts below or with any other perspective on authenticity.

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Performance Research Special Issue – On Music 

Deadline (for submission of abstracts): April 22, 2024
Proposed Publication date: Vol. 30, No. 1 spring 2025

The main aims of this special issue – ‘On Music’ – are to offer critical reflection on the development of Performance Studies across the early twenty-first century, to highlight the current status of practice and research into music performance across genres, and to envisage future directions for the field.

Contributions will be welcomed from across the discipline to engage with the widest possible variety of contexts, functions, and modes of performance and performance-centered inquiry. As befits this range, non-standard formats such as artist pages, highly illustrated articles, and other contributions with distinctive layouts will be accepted.

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Music Ecosystem Research: Challenges and Opportunities

15th International Music Business Research Days (2024)
June 5 – 7, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Department of Journalism and Communication Research in Collaboration with HYPE&FRIENDS and GMM e. V.

Music business research is an interdisciplinary field that puts different analytical approaches into mutual dialogue. It is located at the intersection of economic, artistic, musical, cultural, social, legal, and technological understandings of the creation, distribution, and use of music. This interdisciplinary nature calls for conceptual and methodological multiplicity and an openness to scholars from different fields.

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Young Scholars’ Workshop

The Young Scholars’ Workshop is part of the 15th International Music Business Research Days. Young researchers are invited to submit abstracts from all disciplines exploring questions that help understand economic and managerial problems as well as processes in the music sector and in the field of music management. The Young Scholars’ Workshop will be co-organized by the IJK and the GMM e.V., the German branch of the IMBRA: A society for music business and music culture research.

We encourage early-stage researchers, either in the beginning of their doctorate projects, or in the beginning of their academic careers, to submit paper abstracts. There are many questions that call for investigation in music business research, for example, in the fields of ecosystem transformations, the fields of digital change (AI, streaming, DIY, fan engagement, change in business models, markets and value creation), in Policy & Legislation (sustainability, cultural policy, commercialization and entrepreneurship) and in Education & Research (ecosystem entrepreneurship, new competences, music and health, curriculum in music business in its broadest sense, and the preparation of students for a sustainable future of music ecosystems ).

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Histories of Electronic Musical Instruments

A Routledge/Focal Press Series

Series Editor: Prof. James Newman, Bath Spa University, UK.

Proposals are sought for books to be included in the series, including authored monographs and edited collections.

The goal of Histories of Electronic Musical Instruments is to cut through the hype, hyperbole, mythologies and misinformation associated with electronic musical instruments. Books in the series will offer authoritative and accessible histories of the design, operation and creative uses of seminal instruments.

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Musical Translations & Transformations

International Association for the Study of Popular Music – Australia-Aotearoa/New Zealand
2024 Branch Conference

Dates: Dec 4-6, 2024
Hosts: Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University and Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington
Venue: Massey University Pukeahu Campus, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa.
Local Organising Committee: Catherine Hoad, Geoff Stahl, Kimberly Cannady, Oli Wilson

Those who engage with music-making—as teachers, researchers, practitioners, and critics— transform, translate and integrate popular music practices and scholarship across varied contexts. This can be a deliberate political act, taking the form of activism, resistance, negotiation or advocacy. This transformation and translation is also an increasing characteristic within academic research contexts, whereby researchers may be encouraged and/or expected to demonstrate forms of impact and engagement across different communities, sectors, platforms or spaces.

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MusicID 2024 Digital Research Fellowship

MusicID is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for our sixth Digital Research Fellowship. The fellowship is awarded to a scholar from any discipline and at any career level with a strong vision to undertake music, cultural, and/or digital humanities research.

MusicID is a platform that archives current and historical music industry data into a single, easy-to-use source. Incorporating more than 5,000 charts spanning 74 countries, MusicID provides access to a wealth of music chart data, including from Billboard and the Official Charts Company dating back to 1944, contemporary statistics such as Spotify and Apple Music streams, and Shazam searches. It also offers built-in visualization tools which allow users to create and export customizable tables and graphs.

More info: https://musicidhub.com/musicid-digital-research-fellowships

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