Allan Watson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3718653 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Allan Watson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Allan |
| FAMILY NAME | Watson |
| SIGNATURE | WATSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7120-7664 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 145 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Transnational media corporations in global media cities: A geographical approach to understanding media power through corporate office networks
A central concern of media scholars has been the discursive and economic power of a small number of transnational media corporations (TNMCs). In this paper, we advance research on TNMC power through a novel empirical analysis of their global-spatial organization, reflected in their corporate global office networks. Our findings reveal both global and regional corporate strategies and, further, demonstrate how US new media firms are expanding into…
Supporting regional music production clusters in the post-pandemic era: Placing business support at the heart of local cultural policy
While the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the live music industry have received much attention, little consideration has been given to regional music production clusters more broadly. Evaluating the impacts of the pandemic on the music economy of North West England, this paper identifies key areas of support required as music businesses transition into a digitally-orientated post-COVID period. Findings demonstrate the ways in which the pandem…
Cultural “levelling up” through the music corporation? The case of EMI North
On 27 January 2023 the major record label EMI, now owned by the Universal Music Group, announced the launch of ‘EMI North’, a subsidiary record label to be based at the Duke Studios co-working space in Leeds city centre. The Twitter announcement from EMI stated that “The label will be dedicated to supporting the very best local talent in the North of the UK and providing young people with opportunities to work in the music industry”, while the ne…
Does social media pay for music artists? Quantitative evidence on the co-evolution of social media, streaming and live music
Recent commentaries on the music industry have emphasised the importance of social media in creating a monetisable fan base. However, no quantitative evidence yet exists regarding the correlation between social media follower numbers and artist income. Using a unique dataset of 255 artists signed to a large UK-based independent music publisher, we undertake growth curve modelling to provide a novel quantitative analysis of the correlation between…
Negotiating platformisation: MusicTech, intellectual property rights and third wave platform reintermediation in the music industry
The music industry is a frontier sector of platformisation. Having undergone two previous waves of platform reintermediation in the form of peer-to-peer networks and streaming platforms, a third wave of platform reintermediation is now underway, as a constellation of MusicTech start-ups, fuelled by angel investors and venture capitalists, experiment with digital technologies allowing users to consume or create music in novel ways. Drawing on inte…
Staging atmosphere: Collective Emotional Labour on the Film Set
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept
Not all roads lead to London: Insularity, disconnection and the challenge to ‘regional’ creative industries policy
The notion of ‘regional’ economic growth through the creative industries is rendered problematic by the socio-geographical complexities that characterize them. Addressing an important conceptual and empirical deficit in our understanding of the creative industries at and beyond the regional level, this paper develops a novel and detailed examination of the music economy in North West England. Uncovering a significant disconnection with the mainst…
Framing city networks through temporary projects: (Trans)national film production beyond ‘Global Hollywood’
This article advances research on external urban relations by drawing attention to the role of temporary project-based economic organisation in the formation of inter-firm links between cities. Through a novel empirical examination of (trans)national co-production in the motion picture industry, we reveal how such projects transcend the boundaries of individual production clusters and link urban centres within specific network configurations. Str…
The screams all sound the same: The music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse
Over the last two decades, a substantial body of geographical research has emerged examining the mutually generative relations between music, space, place, landscape, identity and locality. This work has revealed the complex ways in which specific geographical identities and imaginaries can be reinforced and created through differences in sound, through lyrics, and through the acts and meanings of making music. Yet, these identities and imaginari…
Global City Makers: Economic Actors and Practices in the World City Network
Tuning Out' or 'Tuning in'? Mobile Music Listening and Intensified Encounters with the City
Mobile music listening has become an increasingly pervasive part of urban life. Yet it represents an area of enquiry with which urban studies scholars have yet to engage meaningfully. This essay considers the role of mobile music devices in creating new sonic, emotional and social interactions with and within the city. While academic work in this area has emphasized the use of these devices as a 'tuning out' of the physicality of the city, we sug…
Transnational freelancing: Ephemeral creative projects and mobility in the music recording industry
Drawing on Gernot Grabher's work on projects and project ecologies, there has developed a significant literature concerned with project-based organisations, recognising the fluid, transient, skills-based and localised nature of such forms. Yet, despite the inherent need within projects to draw on highly skilled labour, such literature has tended to overlook the importance of freelance, mobile labour within project ecologies, instead focusing on l…
Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio
Recording studios are the most insulated, intimate and privileged sites of music production and creativity. Yet in a world of intensified globalisation, they are also sites which are highly connected into wider networks of music production that are increasingly spanning the globe. This book is the first comprehensive account of the new spatialties of cultural production in the recording studio sector of the musical economy, spatialities that illu…
World City Network Research at a Theoretical Impasse: On the Need to R e‐Establish Qualitative Approaches to Understanding Agency in World City Networks
From the late 1990s, the establishment of a new relational ‘turn’ in the study of world city connectedness in globalisation has run parallel to the wider relational turn occurring in economic geography. Early work, built firmly upon a qualitative approach to the collection and analyses of new intercity datasets, considered cities as being constituted by their relations with other cities. Subsequent research, however, would take a strong quantitat…
Global Media Cities in Transnational Media Networks
This paper considers an alternative dimension of world city network formation, driven by transnational media corporations rather than advanced producer services. Through an empirical analysis of the office networks of leading media corporations, the paper measures the integration of global media cities into the world city network in 2011. An interlocking network model is employed to determine the connectedness of cities within media networks, and…
Running a studio's a silly business’: Work and employment in the contemporary recording studio sector
This paper is concerned with work and employment in the recording studio sector of the contemporary musical economy. More specifically, it aims to begin to address the lack of attention paid to the issue of individual subjectivity in the cultural workplace, through an empirically informed account of how the changing economic conditions in the recording studio sector are impacting on work as seen from the perspective of those working in the sector…
Creating the Right 'Vibe: Emotional Labour and Musical Performance in the Recording Studio
Recording studios are distinctive spaces in which artists are encouraged to expose their emotional selves in intimate moments of musical creativity and performance. In this paper we focus on how music producers and recording engineers perform emotional labour as part of the performative engineering of this musical creativity and performance. Through emotional labour performances, producers and engineers create recording studios as emotional space…
Sociological Perspectives on the Economic Geography of Projects: The Case of Project-Based Working in the Creative Industries
In recent years, there has been a growing concern in economic geography with the organisational practices of project-based working, involving a multiplicity of organisational and personal social networks. Paralleling this debate has been a growing academic interest in the cultural economy and the conditions of creative work, itself characterized by project-based working. Cultural and creative workers are argued to symbolise contemporary transform…
The world according to iTunes: Mapping Urban Networks of Music Production
In this article, I present a social network analysis that explores and maps relational urban networks of production within the global recorded music industry. Within the analysis, recorded music albums are viewed as temporary market-based projects that bring together teams of skilled creative workers in recording studios across the globe. New tools and techniques for networking studios in geographically distant locations give mobile musically cre…
US Hegemony and the Obama Administration: Towards a New World Order
Spaces and Networks of Musical Creativity in the City
Urban geography, both material and imagined, is a crucial mediating factor in the production and consumption of music. The city provides the concrete places which offer spaces for musical creativity. While certain spaces such as recording studios are specifically organised for this purpose, music is produced in many spaces, from the bedroom, garage or home studio, to community and youth centres, to street corners and clubs. Cities also sustain ne…
Global music city: Knowledge and geographical proximity in London's recorded music industry
Drawing from debates in economic geography on relational and organisational proximity as a substitute for geographical proximity, the paper explores characteristics of knowledge transfer in London's recorded music industry through an examination of organisational connections on local and global scales. The paper demonstrates that knowledge transfer within the industry occurs simultaneously across multiple geographical scales, with certain organis…
Global music city: Knowledge and geographical proximity in London's recorded music industry
Drawing from debates in economic geography on relational and organisational proximity as a substitute for geographical proximity, the paper explores characteristics of knowledge transfer in London's recorded music industry through an examination of organisational connections on local and global scales. The paper demonstrates that knowledge transfer within the industry occurs simultaneously across multiple geographical scales, with certain organis…
Global Media Cities in Transnational Media Networks
This paper considers an alternative dimension of world city network formation, driven by transnational media corporations rather than advanced producer services. Through an empirical analysis of the office networks of leading media corporations, the paper measures the integration of global media cities into the world city network in 2011. An interlocking network model is employed to determine the connectedness of cities within media networks, and…
World City Network Research at a Theoretical Impasse: On the Need to R e‐Establish Qualitative Approaches to Understanding Agency in World City Networks
From the late 1990s, the establishment of a new relational ‘turn’ in the study of world city connectedness in globalisation has run parallel to the wider relational turn occurring in economic geography. Early work, built firmly upon a qualitative approach to the collection and analyses of new intercity datasets, considered cities as being constituted by their relations with other cities. Subsequent research, however, would take a strong quantitat…
Creating the Right 'Vibe: Emotional Labour and Musical Performance in the Recording Studio
Recording studios are distinctive spaces in which artists are encouraged to expose their emotional selves in intimate moments of musical creativity and performance. In this paper we focus on how music producers and recording engineers perform emotional labour as part of the performative engineering of this musical creativity and performance. Through emotional labour performances, producers and engineers create recording studios as emotional space…
Spaces and Networks of Musical Creativity in the City
Urban geography, both material and imagined, is a crucial mediating factor in the production and consumption of music. The city provides the concrete places which offer spaces for musical creativity. While certain spaces such as recording studios are specifically organised for this purpose, music is produced in many spaces, from the bedroom, garage or home studio, to community and youth centres, to street corners and clubs. Cities also sustain ne…
Staging atmosphere: Collective Emotional Labour on the Film Set
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
The world according to iTunes: Mapping Urban Networks of Music Production
In this article, I present a social network analysis that explores and maps relational urban networks of production within the global recorded music industry. Within the analysis, recorded music albums are viewed as temporary market-based projects that bring together teams of skilled creative workers in recording studios across the globe. New tools and techniques for networking studios in geographically distant locations give mobile musically cre…
Negotiating platformisation: MusicTech, intellectual property rights and third wave platform reintermediation in the music industry
The music industry is a frontier sector of platformisation. Having undergone two previous waves of platform reintermediation in the form of peer-to-peer networks and streaming platforms, a third wave of platform reintermediation is now underway, as a constellation of MusicTech start-ups, fuelled by angel investors and venture capitalists, experiment with digital technologies allowing users to consume or create music in novel ways. Drawing on inte…
Does social media pay for music artists? Quantitative evidence on the co-evolution of social media, streaming and live music
Recent commentaries on the music industry have emphasised the importance of social media in creating a monetisable fan base. However, no quantitative evidence yet exists regarding the correlation between social media follower numbers and artist income. Using a unique dataset of 255 artists signed to a large UK-based independent music publisher, we undertake growth curve modelling to provide a novel quantitative analysis of the correlation between…
Not all roads lead to London: Insularity, disconnection and the challenge to ‘regional’ creative industries policy
The notion of ‘regional’ economic growth through the creative industries is rendered problematic by the socio-geographical complexities that characterize them. Addressing an important conceptual and empirical deficit in our understanding of the creative industries at and beyond the regional level, this paper develops a novel and detailed examination of the music economy in North West England. Uncovering a significant disconnection with the mainst…
Framing city networks through temporary projects: (Trans)national film production beyond ‘Global Hollywood’
This article advances research on external urban relations by drawing attention to the role of temporary project-based economic organisation in the formation of inter-firm links between cities. Through a novel empirical examination of (trans)national co-production in the motion picture industry, we reveal how such projects transcend the boundaries of individual production clusters and link urban centres within specific network configurations. Str…
Tuning Out' or 'Tuning in'? Mobile Music Listening and Intensified Encounters with the City
Mobile music listening has become an increasingly pervasive part of urban life. Yet it represents an area of enquiry with which urban studies scholars have yet to engage meaningfully. This essay considers the role of mobile music devices in creating new sonic, emotional and social interactions with and within the city. While academic work in this area has emphasized the use of these devices as a 'tuning out' of the physicality of the city, we sug…
Sociological Perspectives on the Economic Geography of Projects: The Case of Project-Based Working in the Creative Industries
In recent years, there has been a growing concern in economic geography with the organisational practices of project-based working, involving a multiplicity of organisational and personal social networks. Paralleling this debate has been a growing academic interest in the cultural economy and the conditions of creative work, itself characterized by project-based working. Cultural and creative workers are argued to symbolise contemporary transform…
Transnational freelancing: Ephemeral creative projects and mobility in the music recording industry
Drawing on Gernot Grabher's work on projects and project ecologies, there has developed a significant literature concerned with project-based organisations, recognising the fluid, transient, skills-based and localised nature of such forms. Yet, despite the inherent need within projects to draw on highly skilled labour, such literature has tended to overlook the importance of freelance, mobile labour within project ecologies, instead focusing on l…
Running a studio's a silly business’: Work and employment in the contemporary recording studio sector
This paper is concerned with work and employment in the recording studio sector of the contemporary musical economy. More specifically, it aims to begin to address the lack of attention paid to the issue of individual subjectivity in the cultural workplace, through an empirically informed account of how the changing economic conditions in the recording studio sector are impacting on work as seen from the perspective of those working in the sector…
Supporting regional music production clusters in the post-pandemic era: Placing business support at the heart of local cultural policy
While the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the live music industry have received much attention, little consideration has been given to regional music production clusters more broadly. Evaluating the impacts of the pandemic on the music economy of North West England, this paper identifies key areas of support required as music businesses transition into a digitally-orientated post-COVID period. Findings demonstrate the ways in which the pandem…
The screams all sound the same: The music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse
Over the last two decades, a substantial body of geographical research has emerged examining the mutually generative relations between music, space, place, landscape, identity and locality. This work has revealed the complex ways in which specific geographical identities and imaginaries can be reinforced and created through differences in sound, through lyrics, and through the acts and meanings of making music. Yet, these identities and imaginari…
US Hegemony and the Obama Administration: Towards a New World Order
Global music city: Knowledge and geographical proximity in London's recorded music industry
Drawing from debates in economic geography on relational and organisational proximity as a substitute for geographical proximity, the paper explores characteristics of knowledge transfer in London's recorded music industry through an examination of organisational connections on local and global scales. The paper demonstrates that knowledge transfer within the industry occurs simultaneously across multiple geographical scales, with certain organis…
Spaces and Networks of Musical Creativity in the City
Urban geography, both material and imagined, is a crucial mediating factor in the production and consumption of music. The city provides the concrete places which offer spaces for musical creativity. While certain spaces such as recording studios are specifically organised for this purpose, music is produced in many spaces, from the bedroom, garage or home studio, to community and youth centres, to street corners and clubs. Cities also sustain ne…
US Hegemony and the Obama Administration: Towards a New World Order
Sociological Perspectives on the Economic Geography of Projects: The Case of Project-Based Working in the Creative Industries
In recent years, there has been a growing concern in economic geography with the organisational practices of project-based working, involving a multiplicity of organisational and personal social networks. Paralleling this debate has been a growing academic interest in the cultural economy and the conditions of creative work, itself characterized by project-based working. Cultural and creative workers are argued to symbolise contemporary transform…
The world according to iTunes: Mapping Urban Networks of Music Production
In this article, I present a social network analysis that explores and maps relational urban networks of production within the global recorded music industry. Within the analysis, recorded music albums are viewed as temporary market-based projects that bring together teams of skilled creative workers in recording studios across the globe. New tools and techniques for networking studios in geographically distant locations give mobile musically cre…
Global Media Cities in Transnational Media Networks
This paper considers an alternative dimension of world city network formation, driven by transnational media corporations rather than advanced producer services. Through an empirical analysis of the office networks of leading media corporations, the paper measures the integration of global media cities into the world city network in 2011. An interlocking network model is employed to determine the connectedness of cities within media networks, and…
Running a studio's a silly business’: Work and employment in the contemporary recording studio sector
This paper is concerned with work and employment in the recording studio sector of the contemporary musical economy. More specifically, it aims to begin to address the lack of attention paid to the issue of individual subjectivity in the cultural workplace, through an empirically informed account of how the changing economic conditions in the recording studio sector are impacting on work as seen from the perspective of those working in the sector…
Creating the Right 'Vibe: Emotional Labour and Musical Performance in the Recording Studio
Recording studios are distinctive spaces in which artists are encouraged to expose their emotional selves in intimate moments of musical creativity and performance. In this paper we focus on how music producers and recording engineers perform emotional labour as part of the performative engineering of this musical creativity and performance. Through emotional labour performances, producers and engineers create recording studios as emotional space…
Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio
Recording studios are the most insulated, intimate and privileged sites of music production and creativity. Yet in a world of intensified globalisation, they are also sites which are highly connected into wider networks of music production that are increasingly spanning the globe. This book is the first comprehensive account of the new spatialties of cultural production in the recording studio sector of the musical economy, spatialities that illu…
World City Network Research at a Theoretical Impasse: On the Need to R e‐Establish Qualitative Approaches to Understanding Agency in World City Networks
From the late 1990s, the establishment of a new relational ‘turn’ in the study of world city connectedness in globalisation has run parallel to the wider relational turn occurring in economic geography. Early work, built firmly upon a qualitative approach to the collection and analyses of new intercity datasets, considered cities as being constituted by their relations with other cities. Subsequent research, however, would take a strong quantitat…
Tuning Out' or 'Tuning in'? Mobile Music Listening and Intensified Encounters with the City
Mobile music listening has become an increasingly pervasive part of urban life. Yet it represents an area of enquiry with which urban studies scholars have yet to engage meaningfully. This essay considers the role of mobile music devices in creating new sonic, emotional and social interactions with and within the city. While academic work in this area has emphasized the use of these devices as a 'tuning out' of the physicality of the city, we sug…
Transnational freelancing: Ephemeral creative projects and mobility in the music recording industry
Drawing on Gernot Grabher's work on projects and project ecologies, there has developed a significant literature concerned with project-based organisations, recognising the fluid, transient, skills-based and localised nature of such forms. Yet, despite the inherent need within projects to draw on highly skilled labour, such literature has tended to overlook the importance of freelance, mobile labour within project ecologies, instead focusing on l…
Global City Makers: Economic Actors and Practices in the World City Network
Framing city networks through temporary projects: (Trans)national film production beyond ‘Global Hollywood’
This article advances research on external urban relations by drawing attention to the role of temporary project-based economic organisation in the formation of inter-firm links between cities. Through a novel empirical examination of (trans)national co-production in the motion picture industry, we reveal how such projects transcend the boundaries of individual production clusters and link urban centres within specific network configurations. Str…
The screams all sound the same: The music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse
Over the last two decades, a substantial body of geographical research has emerged examining the mutually generative relations between music, space, place, landscape, identity and locality. This work has revealed the complex ways in which specific geographical identities and imaginaries can be reinforced and created through differences in sound, through lyrics, and through the acts and meanings of making music. Yet, these identities and imaginari…
Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept
Not all roads lead to London: Insularity, disconnection and the challenge to ‘regional’ creative industries policy
The notion of ‘regional’ economic growth through the creative industries is rendered problematic by the socio-geographical complexities that characterize them. Addressing an important conceptual and empirical deficit in our understanding of the creative industries at and beyond the regional level, this paper develops a novel and detailed examination of the music economy in North West England. Uncovering a significant disconnection with the mainst…
Staging atmosphere: Collective Emotional Labour on the Film Set
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Negotiating platformisation: MusicTech, intellectual property rights and third wave platform reintermediation in the music industry
The music industry is a frontier sector of platformisation. Having undergone two previous waves of platform reintermediation in the form of peer-to-peer networks and streaming platforms, a third wave of platform reintermediation is now underway, as a constellation of MusicTech start-ups, fuelled by angel investors and venture capitalists, experiment with digital technologies allowing users to consume or create music in novel ways. Drawing on inte…
Transnational media corporations in global media cities: A geographical approach to understanding media power through corporate office networks
A central concern of media scholars has been the discursive and economic power of a small number of transnational media corporations (TNMCs). In this paper, we advance research on TNMC power through a novel empirical analysis of their global-spatial organization, reflected in their corporate global office networks. Our findings reveal both global and regional corporate strategies and, further, demonstrate how US new media firms are expanding into…
Supporting regional music production clusters in the post-pandemic era: Placing business support at the heart of local cultural policy
While the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the live music industry have received much attention, little consideration has been given to regional music production clusters more broadly. Evaluating the impacts of the pandemic on the music economy of North West England, this paper identifies key areas of support required as music businesses transition into a digitally-orientated post-COVID period. Findings demonstrate the ways in which the pandem…
Cultural “levelling up” through the music corporation? The case of EMI North
On 27 January 2023 the major record label EMI, now owned by the Universal Music Group, announced the launch of ‘EMI North’, a subsidiary record label to be based at the Duke Studios co-working space in Leeds city centre. The Twitter announcement from EMI stated that “The label will be dedicated to supporting the very best local talent in the North of the UK and providing young people with opportunities to work in the music industry”, while the ne…
Does social media pay for music artists? Quantitative evidence on the co-evolution of social media, streaming and live music
Recent commentaries on the music industry have emphasised the importance of social media in creating a monetisable fan base. However, no quantitative evidence yet exists regarding the correlation between social media follower numbers and artist income. Using a unique dataset of 255 artists signed to a large UK-based independent music publisher, we undertake growth curve modelling to provide a novel quantitative analysis of the correlation between…
Sociology (18 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (16 works) · Political science (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Economic geography (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Business (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Engineering (8 works) · Global Urban Networks and Dynamics (7 works)