The Pleasures of Amateur Music-Making – Catherine Tackley

Catherine Tackley writes about amateur music-making from a personal point of view, touching on the social benefits of musical interaction, the changing relationship between audiences and performers, and the value of amateur music-making to the music economy.  

Live Jazz in Glasgow – Alison Eales

Guest blogger Alison Eales writes about Glasgow’s regular jazz sessions in this week’s blog, and finds a dynamic scene which features a mix of trad and jazz styles across the city, both indoors and in the city’s outdoor public spaces.  

The pervasive curse of pay-to-play in Tokyo – James Hadfield

Today’s guest post is by James Hadfield, an English writer and photographer based in Tokyo, where he writes about music and other subjects for The Japan Times and Tokyo TimeOut amongst others. In this piece he looks at the ubiquity of pay-to-play, or noruma, in the Japanese capital.  

Live Music 101 #6 – What makes for a ‘healthy’ musical city? – Emma Webster and Adam Behr

In the latest addition to the ‘Live Music 101’ series of theory-based posts, Emma Webster and Adam Behr seek to offer some answers to the question of what makes for a good city for music and set out various formulations as to what makes for a ‘healthy’ live music ecology, an examination of the interplay between national and local policy and the musical city, followed by a case study of Glasgow as an archetypal ‘healthy’ musical city.  

Music Licensing and Sustainable Nightlife: Germany’s “GEMA- Tarifreform” Debates – Luis-Manuel Garcia

Our latest guest post is by Luis-Manuel Garcia, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. It provides a brief overview of the author’s in-depth article for Resident Advisor. Here he explains the background to the dispute that has erupted regarding the German royalty collection society’s proposed tariff reforms and their potential effect on the nightclub scene.  

Live Music Census in Victoria, Australia – Dobe Newton

Dobe Newton, organiser of the live music census in the state of Victoria in Australia, gives some background to the census, a discussion of the research process, an overview of the findings and also comparison with wider industry figures.  

The ecology of live music – Neil McSweeney

Sheffield-based singer-songwriter Neil McSweeney explores the idea that, for a healthy live music ecosystem within a locality, there might be an optimum number – or at the least, a minimum provision – of rehearsal spaces, recording facilities and performance spaces for a given population with a given demographic make-up. In doing do, he paves the way towards further research while highlighting its importance for policy makers and local governments.  

Mapping the Maps – Adam Behr

Maps are increasingly integrated into our everyday media consumption and there’s a growth in mapping musical activity – by academics, communities and businesses. In today’s post, Adam Behr tries to unpick some of the different motivations, methods and implications of mapping the music.