Where does 'folk' become 'popular'

Does 'folk' equal 'popular' (i.e. 'of the people')? If only it were that simple. I'll be attending and speaking at a conference in Newcastle which explores the spaces between these two concepts. Where does folk end and popular begin? Perhaps I'll find out, courtesy of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.

I'll be reporting on this event when it happens in April. Meanwhile, check out the conference website and definitive programme.

Also the 'Round Table' papers makes interesting reading for those who argue on the definitions of folk - I'll be posting more shortly on a recent heated argument on that topic here on the normally tranquil Coventry and Warwickshire folk scene...

BFE Conference    ethnomusicology    popular music    folk music

Music PR – a dynamic topic where even the teachers are learners

Here's the text of my article that was published in the PR magazine, Behind The Spin - archived here for reference, and with additional hyperlinks. The magazine also used this pic of the band's 2005 line-up, taken by Chele Willow

Pete Wilby is acting Degree Leader for the Public Relations strand of UCE Birmingham’s degree in Media and Communication. In his spare time he plays guitar for a folk band. Introducing the course’s new module in Music Promotion and PR has given him a golden opportunity to bring these two interests together.

'Rock journalism,’ pronounced the late Frank Zappa, ‘is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read'.

If any statement was designed to point out glaring skills gaps in contemporary information society, this was it.

From the perspective of teaching PR, it was the ‘people who can’t talk’ bit that particularly concerned me. Rock bands, or any type of musical act for that matter, should be just as keen to hit the right buttons of public opinion as a large corporation or a political party. It’s a skill that’s equally as important as performing on stage. Sadly, being able to sing is no guarantee of being able to talk to journalists or indeed to fans.

Wearing my other hats as a musician and a music journalist, I had to agree that here was one industry that attracts a lot of people who really could do with a better understanding of media relations and reputation management.

I play for a folk band. There – I’ve admitted it. And I’m willing to concede that as a genre, folk music needs to put in a lot of work to develop its own PR, but that’s a topic for another article in a future edition. Suffice it say that I have had many years experience of promoting The Oddsods, arranging gigs and media interviews and encouraging audiences to turn up and buy CDs.

This experience has taught me many things. For example, you won’t get much press coverage without a good quality, eye-catching photograph. You need a simple catch-phrase to describe your sound (ours is ‘music for a rare old time’). And don’t expect daytime radio presenters to know anything about your style of music or ask anything more complex than ’What do you call that vertical drum thing? (answer: a bodhran.)

As a writer and broadcaster in folk music I have also recognised the difficulties experienced by many up-and-coming acts in getting their message across. Like any other source of potential media interest, musicians need to come up with good news angles and be able to engage audiences with simple, direct and above all, interesting messages.

Even the best music journalists find it a challenge to say something worthwhile about acts whose biographies are self-indulgent metaphor with no substance, whose image relies on low-resolution poorly-composed photographs and whose entire PR strategy seems to be based on a website that’s tortuous to navigate and offers little reward for anyone who tries.

So when the chance came to launch a module on Music Promotion and PR for UCE’s Media and Communication degree, I grabbed it with both hands. The timing was perfect. We had established a successful specialist route in public relations and had just introduced a new specialism in The Music Industry. The module would fit neatly into both routes and could also be offered as an option module to students focusing on broadcast, print or web-based media. Here was one way to provide a reality-check for musicians seeking fame and fortune and to enable them to identify and apply the communication skills needed to succeed. It was also an opportunity to bring together my own passions for PR and music performance.

The module’s objectives are to explore the practices and techniques of music PR and promotion and help students develop a working knowledge of PR and marketing theory in the context of today’s music industries. The classes have been taught jointly by myself and Mark Sampson, whose independent record label, Iron Man Records is based in Birmingham specialising in rock, punk and ‘anti-folk’. We were determined to cover the broad spectrum.

For both of, this was a classic journey of discovery. Surprise number one was that very few of the 17 students who enrolled were actually musicians. One or two were, or had partners who were. The majority, however, were students who were primarily interested in PR as a career and the possibility of building up the skills and knowledge for this more glamorous area of the profession. Not for them the risks of struggling to survive as touring performers – musicians may come and go, but the demand for music promoters lives on forever.

This proved a distinct advantage for the delivery of this module. While the students may have had personal musical preferences, we were able to encourage them to consider the art of engaging publics for a wide range of musical genres – from choral to country, traditional singers to tribute bands, blues to barber shop quartets. Some of them, without any prompting from me, even undertook critical analyses of promotional tactics adopted by folk bands and their agents.

Surprise number two was the extent of the learning curve that we all had to travel. For Mark, teaching students in the company of a university academic turned out to be something of a business investment, enabling him to pick up on some useful ideas. Ours was a ‘good cop/bad cop’ approach with Mark as the ‘practice’ man and me as the ‘theorist’. However he found himself tuning in to my presentations on diffusion theory and game theory as offering new ways to think through the day-to-day challenges of his job.

Mark believes that the traditional marketing theories, such as E.Jerome McCarthy’s four P’s marketing mix model, will always be relevant to music promotion. However, he also admits that developments in online music promotion – blogs, podcasts, YouTube and viral marketing – have caused him to rethink his own promotional strategies from scratch and develop his own post-Arctic Monkeys model.

Meanwhile – and just like the students – I was finding Mark’s own observations a treasure-trove of insights, not readily available from standard textbooks. We were able to gain a valuable ‘here-and-now’ insight into the structure of the music industry, its reliance on networks of contacts, its professional values and its perspectives of artists and audiences alike.

Also, his comments on how to talk to music journalists, follow up press releases, encourage positive gig reviews, win audience support at live gigs (the PR value in the simple act of talking with paying punters after the show) and maximise one’s online impact had me reaching for my own notebook, determined not to miss any of the advice that would benefit my own band.

As for the students, it’s encouraging to see evidence of a more analytical and strategic approach to music promotion and a keener awareness of how to relate to media practices and expectations. They’re working on their final assignments as I write this – a comprehensive press pack plus recommendations on visual identity, online presence and brand identity. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Meanwhile, I have found myself reflecting on the PR implications of a module on music promotion within a Media Studies degree course. It is difficult enough to find mainstream press reference to Media Studies without the phrase ‘Mickey Mouse course’ somewhere in the same paragraph. The idea of students analysing bands’ MySpace pages and discussing the PR benefits of adopting babies in Malawi could prove too tempting to resist for tabloid editors who treat media degrees and the ‘glitzy’ side of PR with equal degrees of scepticism.

Nevertheless, the music industry accounts for acres of newsprint and eons of air time. Life without music is no life at all and from chart shows to movie soundtracks, music is the lifeblood of popular culture. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the music industry contributes nearly £5 billion per year to the national economy, £1.3 billion of which is from export earnings.

The contribution to this from my own efforts as a musician may be negligible, but it seems to me that the development of skills in music promotion and PR are a very worthwhile occupation.

And who knows? One day in the not-too-distant future, one of my own graduates might consider folk music to be the new chic with The Oddsods at the cutting edge.
Filed under:

music PR    music journalism    marketing    PR education    UCE    folk image  
Iron Man Records    Oddsods