Capsule started a ball rolling the other week, talking about how to engage regional audiences. There’s a good discussion in the comments that’s worth (re)visiting.
Dunc from The Autumn Store (and various indiepop bands, I’ve slightly lost track tbh) has followed this with “Why Don’t People Come To My Gigs”: Some thoughts on audience categorisation. Which is very good and kinda in the vein of the guides to promoting gigs he wrote a while back (have a root through his site).
Following a couple of links, I stumbled across Scene Not Heard which seems to have started at the beginning of this year:
Scene Not Heard aims to be a portal for artists and fans alike to the massive great plethora of musical happenings going on in Birmingham
There’s also a discussion thread about Birmingham’s music scene on Drowned in Sound, but I think they tend to come round fairly frequently.
Which all adds up to a community of music people in Birmingham all wanting to make stuff happen (standard caveats about ‘music’ tending to refer to indie/rock only in these kinds of discussions).
One more thing to highlight in all of this is a line from Dunc’s post in which he refers to the original discussion on Capsule’s blog, the significance of which I leave to you to discern:
it’s off the back of an event discussing the ‘music industry’ which always makes me feel like I shouldn’t be part of the conversation
I know what he means, it still makes me shudder every time I hear art described as a ‘creative industry’ – being lumped together with those with very different agendas to ours makes no sense. As an artist I have as much in common with someone who designs packaging for MacDonald’s, as I have with anyone doing anything – we’re on the planet together, but that’s about it. I’m guessing that’s what Dunc means, it’s all about the music, not the industry!
There’s a series of related blog posts here as well:
http://birminghammusicnetwork.com/blog/
(Re: slightly surprising “music industry” question)
Maybe I’m in some kind of minority, but the distinction being drawn seems obvious enough. I have definitely never thought that “music industry” equates directly to “music and gigs”. Use one of those terms and I think of companies that lend money to a random selection of bands and artists prior to demanding it back, or mobile phone firms that endorse poor-quality venues for big concerts by bands signed to said companies. Use the other and I think of music and gigs.
Glad you brought this up on CiB Chris. It’s a really complex issue and while I don’t feel informed enough to write a huge comment or post about it (yet), I think it’s a debate worth having. I’m glad an established, respected organisation like Capsule put it out there.
Ah, ta for the Birmingham Music questionnaires link – I’ve not been very on top of my RSS reader recently and hadn’t seen them.
Russ – yeah, that’s pretty much the point. I think the way some people talk about music puts others (with a lot of good experience and useful stuff to say) right off. Using the ‘i’ word is part of that. But then I guess there’s a risk of spending too long fannying around trying to find a form of words/drawing arbitrary lines that offend no-one rather than doing much of any practical use – music politics, eh?