Home thoughts on festive occasions – Simon Frith

In our latest blog post, Live Music Exchange co-founder Professor Simon Frith OBE reflects on the history of festivals, along with how they have been studied, and considers the implications of Covid-19 for their future.

Journal of a Plague Week – Simon Frith

Our latest post is by Professor Simon Frith OBE, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, former Chair of the Mercury Prize, music critic, and co-founder of Live Music Exchange. Here, he reflects on past gigs and the curtailment of live music activity as a result of Covid-19, from a personal and sociological perspective.

Valuing small venues: The Cellar, Oxford – Live Music Exchange team

Anyone following the Live Music Exchange blog will be well aware that the UK has seen an alarming number of small music venue closures over the past decade or so. The latest venue under threat is The Cellar in Oxford, an underground 150-capacity venue which has been a music venue for more than 45 years. The owner, St Michael’s and …

Reflections on the Mercury Prize – Simon Frith

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 …

The Ecology of Live Music: the evolution of an idea – Live Music Exchange editorial team

To mark the publication of our academic article on the live music ecology, the LMX team is publishing our original discussion notes. These illustrate the origins of the ideas that inform the article but include points that weren’t further developed (and perhaps should have been). We thought it worth making public—particularly in relation to this topic—an aspect of the academic process that is usually hidden.

What you see is what you get: Notes on Performance – Professor Simon Frith

In today’s post, Professor Simon Frith examines aspects of musical performance and, in the process, reconsiders performance studies as an academic pursuit.

Making Sense of Pomplamoose – Professor Simon Frith

Towards the close of 2014, Pompaloose’s Jack Conte posted a detailed breakdown of their 23 date US tour income and costs, and provoked a lively blogosphere debate. With the dust settled, Live Music Exchange’s Professor Simon Frith discusses what can be learned from the post and the spectrum of perspectives it mobilised.

The Audience – Simon Frith

Live Music Exchange’s Professor Simon Frith discusses the audience as a collective and then questions its sociological role in concerts and the problems that attracting an audience poses for promoters, arts organisations and academics as they engage in audience building and audience research.

Playing for nothing – Simon Frith

This week’s guest blog is by Simon Frith, in which he muses on the perennial problem about musicians playing for free and suggests that the problem of ‘playing for free’ is caused by the ‘exploitation’ of live musicians by the people who make money out of them.

Simon Frith on live music on BBC Radio 4: Thinking Allowed 22/05/13

A blog post flagging up BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thinking Allowed’ programme, broadcast on 22 May 2013, which was devoted to the social history of live music in the UK, featuring Simon Frith.