music manager – Music Business Research

The 8th Vienna Music Business Research Days from Sep. 12-14, 2017 are devoted to the question “Unchaining the Digital Music Business?”. Over the past few years new gatekeeping processes in the digital music business have emerged and international music business experts, therefore, highlight the role of new and old gatekeepers as well as the impact of innovative technologies such as the blockchain on structures and processes in the musis biz. Find the program here.

Sally Gross is a discussant on “New Gatekeeping Processes in the Digital Music Business” along with Scott Cohen (The Orchchard, London and New York), Sarita Stewart (Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business at Belmont University in Nashville/USA) and Jake Beaumont-Nesbitt (International Music Managers Forum, London).

Sally Gross is the Program Director, MA Music Business Management at the University of Westminster. She started her career in the music industry as a music manager in 1990 and over the course of two decades has been involved with 5 acts (either as a manager or a record company director) that have each sold over a million records: Adamski, Rollo and Rob D (who are responsible for Dido), Urban Cookie Collective, William Orbit, Gotan Project and now One Direction with the song Little Things, penned by her client Fiona Bevan.

In 2000, she won the Helena Kennedy Award for Outstanding Legal Criticism whilst studying law at Birkbeck University, after which she spent a couple of years working in entertainment law. She has been involved with all aspects of the music industry from raves in the French Alps to sold out shows at Hollywood Bowl to Sydney Opera House.

Sally continues to work as international business affairs manager for Ya Basta Records and Science et Melodie Publishing in Paris, home of Gotan Project and producer and DJ Philippe Cohen Solal and is currently working on an album and stage project about the world renown US outsider artist Henry Darger.

More recently Sally’s research interests have concerned working conditions and mental health issues within the music industries.

The new issue of the International Journal of Music Business Research includes three papers that cover music streaming psychology, the relevance of aesthetic preferences in record labels and the importance of narrative as a tool in recording artist biographies. “The Psychology of Music Streaming – Exploring Music Listeners’ motivations To Favour Access over Ownership” by Geoff Luck (Finnish Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä) focuses on streaming’s radical impact on the way we now experience music. The change from ownership to on-demand access of a virtually unlimited amount of music challenges previous notions of how music is defined, experienced and consumed. “Aesthetic preferences and aesthetic ‘agnosticism’ among managers in music organisations: is liking projects important?” by Paul Saintilan (Director of Macleay and Collarts colleges in Australia) is pertinent to the predominately ‘pull’ nature of the modern streaming based market. The paper examines how senior managers within the large music organisations deal with their individual aesthetic preferences in their decision making when developing and marketing new work? “Why narratives are better than chronicles of achievement in musicians’ biographies” by Peter Gilks (Entertainment Management department at I-Shou University in Taiwan), is relevant to better understanding modern music consumer behaviour including new music discovery and the reliance of many online music services such as Spotify on recording artist biographies. The paper draws on Simon Frith’s theory that music appreciation involves identification with broader cultural narratives and Bruner’s theory that identities are narratively constructed.