Search results for ""Author Dave Laing""

Buddy Holly occupies an enigmatic position in pop and rock music history, partly because of his premature death at the age of 22 in a plane crash in February 1959. Designated in Don MacLean's hit "American Pie" as 'the day the music died', this enabled him to be included in the trope 'the death of rock 'n roll', alongside the less drastic musical demises of Elvis Presley (joined army), Chuck Berry (imprisoned), Jerry Lee Lewis (disgraced) and Little Richard (joined priesthood). The view that Holly belongs only to the 1950s has often obscured the originality of his music. In an era when the music world was divided into hard rockers, soft pop balladeers and hardcore Nashville country & western singers, his songs transcended the boundaries. Equally innovatory was his use of the recording studio as a laboratory, a place to experiment with sounds. In addition, the two guitars, bass and drums line-up of his group the Crickets was the major contributor to the small group template for generations of rock musicians down to the present day. As well as becoming an influence on other musicians in a conventional sense, Buddy Holly has had his own lengthy musical and cultural afterlife.From the vantage point of 2009, a half century after 'the day the music died', Holly has been the longest-serving member of the rock immortals club, those singers and musicians for whom death seemed to inaugurate a new phase of their career. He has been re-embodied in a biopic, a stage show, in iconic images and numerous reissues of his recordings. While he cannot rival Elvis Presley in terms of sightings (nobody, I think, believes Buddy is still alive) or in terms of 'virtual' performance with his old band, he has been re-embodied in a biopic, a stage show, in iconic images and numerous reissues of his recordings. This book is partly based on the author's 1970 study in the "Rockbooks" series. But it aims to provide a new perspective on Buddy Holly by discussing his career and art in the context of his unique contribution to the swiftly-evolving music scene of the late 1950s and his posthumous 50 year multi-media career through films, stage-shows and copious reissues of his oeuvre.

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The music industries are fuelled by statistics: sales targets, breakeven points, success ratios, royalty splits, website hits, ticket revenues, listener figures, piracy abuses and big data. Statistics are of consequence. They influence the music that consumers get to hear, they determine the revenues of music makers, and they shape the policies of governments and legislators. Yet many of these statistics are generated by the music industries themselves, and their accuracy can be questioned. This original new book sets out to explore this shadowy terrain. While there are books that offer guidelines about how the music industries work, as well as critiques from academics about the policies of music companies, this is the first book that takes a sustained look at these subjects from a statistical angle. This is particularly significant as statistics have not just been used to explain the music industries, they are also essential to the ways that the industries work: they drive signing policy, contractual policy, copyright policy, economic policy and understandings of consumer behaviour. This edited collection provides the first in-depth examination of the use and abuse of statistics in the music industries. The international group of contributors are noted music business scholars and practitioners in the field. The book addresses five key areas in which numbers are employed: sales and awards; royalties and distribution; music piracy; music policy; and audiences and their uses of music. The authors address these subjects from a range of perspectives. Some of them test the veracity of this data and explore its tactical use by music businesses. Others are helping to generate these numbers: they are developing surveys and online projects and offer candid self-observations in this volume. There are also authors who have been subject to statistics; they deliver first-hand accounts of music industry reporting. The digital age is inherently numerical. Within the music industries this has prompted new ways of tracking the usage and recompense of music. In addition, it has generated new means of monitoring and engaging audience behaviour. It has also led to increased documentation of the trade. There is more reporting of the overall revenues of music industry sectors. There is also more engagement between industry and academia when it comes to conducting analyses and offering numerical recommendations to politicians. The aim of this collection is to expose the culture and politics of data. Music industry statistics are all-pervasive, yet because of this ubiquity they have been under-explored. This book provides new ways by which to learn music by numbers. A timely examination of how data and statistics are key to the music industries. Widely held industry assumptions are challenged with data from a variety of sources and in an engaging, lucid manner. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in how the music business uses and manipulates the data that digital technologies have made available. Primary readership will be among popular music academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students working in the fields of popular music studies, music business, media studies, cultural studies, sociology and creative industries. The book will also be of interest to people working within the music industries and to those whose work encounters industry statistics.

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