Anna Cowan, is 17 and lives in Glasgow. She, along with 3 of her friends, founded and run the campaign, Girls Against, to fight against sexual harassment at gigs. This blog post was first published in 2016 on the Girls Against blog. I believe all powerful political movements and campaigns begin from a sense of anger or alienation; the feeling that …
This blog is an introduction to the resources available for workers who may be interested in becoming a member of a tour’s road crew. Gabrielle Kielich provides guidance to some of the information available and we invite readers to comment and suggest additional resources in the comments box below. Road crew — or “roadies” — are an important part of …
This week’s blog post is by guest contributor Gareth Whitehead, who manages Bullet Dodge Records, regularly promotes House and Techno events, and lectures in Music Business at New College Lanarkshire. In it, he highlights the issue of high DJ fees and the booking agents who ask for them, and questions whether there is now a need for collective action against …
In this, the last blog post of 2016, Live Music Exchange’s own Simon Frith reflects on his 25-year tenure as the chair of the judges of the Mercury Prize to consider what has – and hasn’t – changed within the UK record industry over the last quarter of a century. On September 15, after Skepta was awarded the 2016 Mercury …
A new report, written by Emma Webster and George McKay and published online last week, highlights the impact of British music festivals and shows that festivals are now at the heart of the British music industry, forming an essential part of the worlds of rock, classical, folk and jazz. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Connected Communities programme, the report is based on a critical literature review of more than 170 books, papers and reports.
This week’s blog post is by Live Music Exchange’s own Emma Webster, in response to The Times‘ leader about the removal of nightclubs from the ONS ‘basket of goods’ in March 2016. The post draws attention to The Times’ seeming horror at the inefficiency of the process, a latent hatred of nightclubs, an implicit fear of gathering crowds, and the delight in the pursuit of individual rather than group pleasure. The piece offers a defence of nightclubs from an economic and social perspective, and questions the real motives behind the glee of the author in chronicling the demise of the nightclub sector.