Music Management

Ragged Music aims to build a directory of Music Managers. If you are a musician or a band who is seeking to make a living from their music then it is important to do your homework and be prepared to present information in the way it is requested. A good book on this is The Music Management Bible put together by the Music Management Forum, which is worth while joining. Also the Unsigned Guide is a great resource..
Going into situations under-prepared and without the required commitment will create problems. If you are committed, self motivated and do what you say you will, then you will where you want to be. Unreliability, a lack of flexibility and an unwieldy ego will lose you friends you want friends where you are going ! Read more…

Understanding Music Piracy: A Consideration of Research Methodology by Dr Steven Caldwell Brown

In this brief article, I want to share some thoughts and memories from my Doctoral studies into the psychology of music piracy. Above all, I want to engage readers in a wider debate about research methodology, directing curious readers to resources which will satisfy further reading into the topic area. Food for thought…


Starter

Music piracy is one of those things that is difficult to talk about, because people get very emotional. It’s a real thing, something people are engaged in. Read more…

Music: I could never do that… By Daniel Zambas

Whenever I talk to people about creating music I regular hear the statement “I could never do that”. What is it that makes people on the whole think this? Is there some magical ingredient that must be present to be a musician? I don’t think that there is. I personally feel that it is very much a learned behaviour, a language and like a language time must be spent to understand it. Read more…

Harmonisation: A Theory by Dan Zambas

I am outraged, apathetic, empowered, disenfranchised, cynical and optimistic. I am all of these things, contradictory feelings that are equal outcomes to a mindset that I doubt I experience alone; A product of the modern era and the human condition.

In my youth I believed that we were heading to a period of enlightenment, the information era. An era where at our fingertips we had access to the most beautiful theory and experience that humanity could possibly offer. That the pure infection of its positivity would overwhelm previously negative constructs and push us towards a direction that would see an end to the ‘evils’ in the world. Read more…

Are Singer Songwriters Valued? by Katharina Turner

My name is Katharina Turner and I am a singer-songwriter. I’ve been many things in my 32 years, and creating and delivering songs I’ve made is by far both my most challenging and most enjoyed pursuit. I approached Ragged University about the possibility of assisting me with my music and now I’m writing this essay to detail my experiences of the struggle to be paid.

I have as a singer songwriter encountered a lot of difficulty in being paid. I feel this is both about transcending through the system which has been in place as much as me myself, where I stand in my beliefs about the way the world interacts with me and things. And I am going to explore both these elements in this piece.

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Ragged Music: Edinburgh Fringe Festival August 2011

In July of 2011 Gary Boast and I were approached by Alex Dunedin from Ragged University to request help in coordinating a programme for the month of August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Dunedin had procured two venues for the entire month and wanted someone with a musical background to help him in providing an organisational approach that gave the artists not just a platform to perform, but the assurance of support throughout the process.   The philosophical ideal of Ragged Music was very simple; inclusive approach, self-led development, and sharing knowledge within the music community.
Boast and I were based in Manchester and were not familiar with the venues we were working with in Edinburgh, nor had either of us attended the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before. Dunedin educated us on how the festival operated and expressed the importance of a stress-free experience for the artists as one of our primary goals. Boast’s role in the initial programming of the festival was invaluable – his methodical and practical experience as a drummer and sound engineer shaped the approach with which we planned the event. Read more…

Popular Music by Dan Zambas

Popular Music is easily definable as music that is popular. Although this category is generally saved for music that hits the Top 40 charts of its time, it can apply to any genre with a following. Society understands this term as chart music and may be met with some confusion when the claim ‘jazz is popular music’ is made. Musicologist Philip Tagg defined popular music with the following statement:

‘Popular music, unlike art music, is conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners, stored and distributed in non-written form, only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and in capitalist societies, subject to the laws of ‘free’ enterprise, according to which it should ideally sell as much as possible of as little as possible to as many as possible’

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