'Music ‘mushrooms’: a student entrepreneurship ‘live project’ exploring
how blockchain technology could affect the creative industries'
Presenters: Marcus O’Dair, (School of Media & Performing Arts), David Neilson, (School of Science & Technology), Zuleika Beaven, (School of Media & Performing Arts)
Three members of the university’s Blockchain for Creative Industries research cluster discuss the ‘mushrooms’ being developed by Popular Music and Music Business & Arts Management students. This creative enterprise ‘live project’ is intended to enhance students’ employability and self-employability, and directly relates to staff research and knowledge exchange activity.
Outline: There is, understandably, much focus today on the need for undergraduate programmes to enhance employability. What is sometimes overlooked is that, for the music industries, as for the creative industries more broadly, preparedness for self-employment is at least as important. And though enterprise is sometimes understood in neoliberal terms as being motivated primarily by profit, others (for instance Bessant and Tidd, 2007) have suggested that ‘lifestyle entrepreneurs’ can be distinguished from ‘innovative’ and ‘growth entrepreneurs’.
If we reject the trait-based view that entrepreneurs are ‘born not made’ in favour the behavioural perspective developed by Gartner in the 1980s, then enterprise is something we can teach. In order to encourage deep learning, we believe it is best developed through ‘live projects’. In this symposium we will discuss one particular ‘live project’, which focuses on the potential uses of blockchain technology in the music industries. Its ramifications, however, are much broader, both because blockchain technology is now seen as potentially revolutionising a range of industries, from banking to visual art, and because the broader theme of synergies between teaching excellence and employability/self-employability is relevant across schools and departments.
Blockchain technology has received considerable attention from scholars in the last year or two, but almost all this attention has been on either technical and regulatory aspects or its potential for the financial sector. Despite media suggestions that the blockchain could ‘revolutionise’ the music industry, there is a clear gap in the academic literature on blockchain as it relates to the music and, more broadly, all creative industries. It is this gap that the Blockchain for Creative Industries research cluster is attempting to help fill.
Marcus O’Dair, Zuleika Beaven and David Neilson, all members of the cluster, have been running a creative enterprise ‘live project’ in which Popular Music and Music Business & Arts Management students explore the possibilities of blockchain technology for the music industries by developing ‘mushrooms’ – the business that would sit on top of the Mycelia music platform proposed by musician, songwriter and producer Imogen Heap. This symposium will draw on the stated perceptions of participating students to explore ways in which students’ views of this nascent technology have changed over the course of the project. David Neilson will cover the technical aspects of blockchain technology, and applications beyond the music industries; Zuleika Beaven will discuss student self-perception and identity, including a perceived tension between artistic and entrepreneurial identities; and Marcus O’Dair will talk about implications for pedagogy and curricula.
Key words: Creative entrepreneurship, live project, self-employability, blockchain technology, music industries
Session learning outcomes: To understand how a ‘live project’ case study might work, from both (multidisciplinary) academic and student perspectives; to understand how the project has affected student perception of blockchain technology, very much a hot topic in music (and other) industries, and of their own entrepreneurial potential; to suggest possible challenges in setting up and managing such a project and ways in which they might be minimised; to explore ways in which teaching and learning might complement research and knowledge exchange.
