Music Industries Innovation

We are one of the leading research centres and have a proven track record in producing internationally excellent research in a number of diverse areas of music industries innovation, including studies of music fans online, the affordances of digital technology in music business and culture, and new ways to promote jazz. You would be supervised by academics who combine research, teaching and work in the field of digital music.

Professor of Music Industries Innovation, Andrew Dubber, author of several key texts on digital music, has been advising digital music start-ups since 2005 and is considered a world-wide authority on the subject of music innovation.

Prof Tim Wall uses insights from his historical studies to understand contemporary technological and cultural change, and works with students studying internet and community radio and online music sharing.

Likewise, Dr Nick Gebhardt, an authority on the entertainment industry, jazz history and popular music in the United States, is currently developing new research around the role of music workers in the digital age, an area where Dr Simon Barber, who completed his doctoral thesis on the impact of digital recording technologies, and who has recently been working with independent record labels on new promotional and operational methodologies, is also developing new research around professional songwriters.

Dr Paul Long, Reader in Media and Cultural History, and a veteran of the UK music industry, recently completed a pan-European project on the impact of media and music heritage on vocational education and is developing a new strand of research around digital archiving practice.