Entrepreneurship and Music Technology Practitioners — Case Studies in Studio Survival
Entrepreneurship and Music Technology Practitioners
The field of record production has undergone substantial shifts, and entrepreneurial skills have become essential for anyone aiming to succeed as a recording professional. In the studio environment — as in every corner of the music industry — adapting to change, whether driven by new technologies or evolving practices, has always been part of the professional mindset. A key part of this process involves developing the interfaces between amateur, semi-professional, and professional activities.
Recording has always exemplified technological determinism — the idea, coined by the American philosopher Thorstein Veblen, that technology governs human activity rather than the other way around. This effect was visible from the very beginning. The 3’45” length of the average single, for example, was dictated by the physical limits of shellac and later vinyl records. Multi-tracking turned many recorded songs into commercial objects that could not possibly be replicated live. For a studio professional, recognizing how closely creativity is tied to future developments in audio technology is therefore critical.
In studio practice — as in other segments of the music business — success depends on a combination of positive personality traits, a solid network, and luck. Aggestam calls this a “harmonious set of skills” that includes what Leadbeater and Oakley describe as “intangible assets such as know-how.” This chapter uses two case studies — the experiences of two different informants — to explore some of the challenges recording professionals face. These stories include both difficulties and positive career moves. They offer different perspectives on how entrepreneurial skills operate in music production: one features a sole practitioner who integrates business and music technology skills; the other describes how an adaptable practical engineering “toolkit” served a mainstream commercial organization.
Key Concepts and Issues
The case studies were chosen because they illustrate issues common in the early stages of a studio professional's career. One producer launched her own fledgling production company using her background as a cheerleader. This choice highlights just how flexible a practitioner must be at the micro level of practice.
Chantal Epp runs Synergy Sounds, a business that shows how “entrepreneurs are agents of change.” She relies on the Internet both to gather materials and to distribute her product. Her commercial activity sits solidly in Chris Anderson’s “long tail” — she serves a niche market with a small, clearly defined, and perhaps limited number of potential clients.
The other interviewee, a recording engineer, takes a different approach. She treats herself as a resource, carving out a role in the network of large commercial studios in London. Helen Atkinson works as a more conventional studio engineer, but shifting recording technology has opened a niche for her as a skilled live engineer. She participates in new distribution methods — direct from a live show to iTunes, for example — and relies on entrepreneurial skills to build on her technical knowledge and interpersonal experience.
Rapid technological change has intensified both the possibilities and the pressures on studio professionals. This applies not only to the recording and mixing stages but also to how artists, producers, and engineers communicate, and to distribution methods. Listening and consumption habits have been in constant motion since recording was invented. Over the last three decades, the Internet-driven globalization of the music industry has pushed a rationalization of methods and aesthetics that could potentially dampen innovation and forward thinking. As Prior notes, “…the ubiquity of digital technology is inseparable from the rise of globalization and the expansion of free-market capitalism increasingly reliant on rapid modes of communication.”
Negus describes the “chaos and disorder” of the music industry in the 1990s and the “conflict between commerce and creativity or art and capitalism.” Adding in the accelerated pace of technological change, the anticipatory approach Negus discusses has become essential to survival. Recently, audience expectations have shifted under the influence of cheap portable listening, the subcultural capital of new vinyl collecting, audiophilia, and the desire of younger bands to imitate their parents’ record collections — think of rock bands wanting the sound of Led Zeppelin. That demand has triggered a slow revival of analogue studio facilities to serve that niche.
Even in an age of globalization, understanding place remains essential. Cultural clusters exist physically, sometimes concentrated in areas like repurposed industrial zones or dockland sites — Leith in Edinburgh and London’s East End, for instance. These physical clusters coexist with a global Internet of opportunity and competition. Local scenes, frequently supported by local and national regeneration funding, combine music performance and recording studios with design spaces, cafés, bars, clubs, technology start-ups, and craft industries, generating recognized bursts of creativity. Yet a scene can also be diasporic. The case studies here demonstrate a movement away from fixed locations and toward a wider networked client community held together by effective use of communication technology.
The two producers generate these case studies interact with the Internet in different ways. One depends on it for both marketing and content — she must constantly refresh the digitized music she uses for her mash-ups. The other uses the Net to send completed mixes and masters directly to iTunes, working on location “in the box” (that is, using a laptop to capture live performances). At first glance, we might define Chantal as a creative professional and Helen as an expert facilitator, but both of their activities exceed those labels. Chantal’s work can be called postmodern: she redefines existing music for a new purpose, creating a new artifact. Helen’s output is much more modern: she builds skills designed to service other creative professionals.
Central to both practitioners’ work is the need to build social networks and develop a “confident and committed view of the world.” This matches one of Leadbeater and Oakley’s definitions of an entrepreneur. Computer technology is essential to both, and Chantal’s business especially highlights what Hesmondhalgh identifies as a genuinely novel characteristic of the cultural industries since the 1980s: “…large and small companies are increasingly interdependent and mutually entangled in complex networks of licensing, financing and distribution.”
A young person entering higher education or an apprenticeship must bring together a variety of skills: some self-taught, some peer-shared, some acquired at a school or through less formal educational organizations. Tension often arises between the individual’s ambition and the practical requirements of potential clients. As on the artistic side of the industry, the idea of the star or the “auteur” can motivate a producer to buy new hardware and software, learn practical skills, and, most significantly, make a time commitment that blurs the boundary between amateur and professional. For a producer used to working entirely on their own and controlling their output, it can be difficult to accept that a supplier role, from a business standpoint, can supersede the creative role.
The employment realities for any musician are extremely harsh. Every year British universities and vocational courses graduate a glut of well-qualified studio engineers and would-be producers. Meanwhile, others enter the job market through traditional apprenticeships, and a steady stream of self-taught producer-engineers succeed at a subcultural level by way of pirate radio or DJ-ing. The situation is further complicated by two opposing trends: a contraction of opportunity for midsize studios, and an expansion of opportunity for small-scale home production driven by laptop availability. The collapse over the last twenty years of traditional music retailing structures has overlaid all this, making the industry unstable and hostile to change.
Nevertheless, as the first case study shows, a viable business can be founded by combining a crafted set of skills, a compelling personality, and the ability to respond to niche-market demands. It is encouraging to discover that a broad base of studio-related skills is still in demand — a need served mainly by adaptable people who have branded themselves as specialists.
This might seem like a contradiction, but focus as a specialist frequently needs to be supported by change-management abilities and generalized skills such as patience, reliability, juggling tasks to prioritize urgent work without losing smaller clients (who could grow into bigger clients over time), and moving smoothly across different hardware and software platforms. This fundamentally a “say yes to everything” approach, one demonstrated, for instance, when mastering engineer Mandy Parnell shipped a portable mastering rig to Iceland to re-master Björk’s Biophilia album on short notice, occasionally working 36-hour days to meet the deadline.
Entrepreneurship drives the recording industry for many reasons. Recorded music acts as the soundtrack to a vast range of human experiences. It is generation-specific, culture-specific, and gender-specific. It contributes cultural capital — in the terms of Bourdieu — and also the subcultural capital described by Thornton. Innovation and experimentation often happen at the margins of music production, precisely where aspiring entrepreneurs are most active.
Leadbeater notes that cultural entrepreneurs frequently throw themselves into their work with little concern for initial financial investment. This brings with it a lack of capital, planning, and manpower that can destroy a small business. But great opportunity is available to anyone with strong social skills and the “radar” to recognize music production technology and tools that will endure. Similarly, the ability to predict when studio equipment will become obsolete and simultaneously spot growing interest in certain vintage sounds and techniques allows a savvy practitioner to ride the waves that keep the industry alive.
An example illustrates the point: the recent resurgence of vinyl as a recorded format has produced a corresponding demand for genre-appropriate mastering techniques and tools. Clients need access to a cutting facility and a specific approach to sleeve design, packaging, and distribution. An engineer who understands not only the different sonic identities of musical genres but also the routes the finished music will follow from the studio to the listener is well placed to create a business opportunity from the pool of knowledge built through informal networking and peer sharing. This kind of end-to-end thinking once belonged to efficient managers, but has now become a core survival skill for every studio practitioner.
High risk persists in any part of the creative industries because entrepreneurs set audiences as their market. There is a magnified tension between production and consumption because so many shifting cultural factors determine audience tastes and behavior. Likewise, the music industry itself is — in Negus’s phrasing — a “web of working practices, dialogues and articulated relationships” that often has to be negotiated with substantial amounts of lateral thinking.
In short, music production as a field has continually developed alongside rapid technological change. Experiment and technical novelty are woven into its practice. Those producers and engineers who can welcome change and follow seemingly random pathways from client — whether artist or label — to audience quickly, efficiently, confidently, and with creative sensitivity are far more likely to thrive than those who care only about audio for its own sake.
Case Studies
The primary case study here examines music producer Chantal Epp, who received a BA in Commercial Music from the University of Westminster in 2013. As her final project, she founded a cheer-music company, Synergy Sounds. Since graduation the business has grown steadily. Chantal was a cheerleader herself who, badly injured and bedridden, could no longer be a participant. Bored, she realized that no supplier of custom cheer music in Britain existed. She chose to fill that gap and started a company that actively creates and produces tracks on order for teams across the United Kingdom. She could draw on original music technology skills, had ways to find materials for her mash-ups, and her business sense turned a period of forced immobility into an advantage.
I asked Chantal to describe the nature of her business more directly:
I was a cheerleader at university and I got injured. I was the captain of my squad at the time, at uni, and my coach said, 'Oh, why don't you do the music for the team, for the competition?,' I'd had some previous experience with a producer, I'd done some recording with him, so I had basic understanding of how the studio works, and just developed it from there. I’ve found a niche market for my work.
As she set up the company, her mother provided Chantal’s role model — she had established and successfully run a dental practice. Chantal had worked for her mother for six years, picking up business skills along the way. She earned encouragement from her coach and from Mike Exarchos, her music-technology lecturer at university. Mike developed her programming abilities in two months. She put the enforced isolation of her injury recovery to practical effect.
Chantal first offered her cheer-music business concept to her coach, but he was uninterested in pursuing it as part of his own company. Market research revealed a market for this music; only two or three other companies were supplying cheer music in the UK at that point. Start-up costs were minimal: she already had a laptop with music software, received backup support from Mike and other lecturers, and — perhaps most valuable — had ample time to learn the specific methods cheer music requires.
She describes her own impatience as an important reason for going off on her own. She built on prior studio experience, which included working in a conventional studio and a short internship at a music supervision firm:
I did a couple of weeks with Matthew Marston who's a producer in Kingston, Surrey, and he taught me a little bit about Pro-Tools. I just basically made some music, he recorded me and then I also learnt a bit about the production side. And I did some work with PRS and music licensing as work experience; I did a week of music supervision with Platinum Rye. It was suggested that I could go into music supervision because there, I'm finding music that fits a brief.
Chantal currently works part-time at CueSongs, a company co-founded by Peter Gabriel. Her role involves music supervision, managing YouTube channels, and more. This day job does two things for her own productions: it honer her abilities to “feel” the music, and it brings her a constant supply of fresh music she can use in her cheer-music mash-ups.
She explains:
I like to create stuff that's different, not mainstream pop; I like everyone's mixes to be original, something where I can get instrumentals and acapella, and add the individual touch to it.
At school, Chantal concentrated heavily on music — classical music primarily. A good music teacher encouraged her to apply for the BA at the University of Westminster after A Levels, given her interest in the business of music. By many standards she has invented an ideal business for herself, aligned with all of her passions. She feels a strong sense of achievement as the company gradually builds and matures.
Overall, here we find music skills, a capacity to learn, and a clear business interest all combined in one account.
Her approach to being a producer is very much of the modern age. As an entrepreneur, she understands that the landscape will keep shifting and she must adapt accordingly. Cheerleading, for instance, is relatively new to the UK, though in the USA, where it originated, it is far more established, and many more companies now supply music to teams. She has a strong awareness of the potential future for her music:
In terms of the cheerleading industry itself, it's a massively growing sport in the UK, Canada, and all over the world; it's huge. Europe is very behind. It's most popular in America, and then Canada and then the UK – so Canada's three years behind America, we're five to seven years behind, and then Europe is ten years behind. I think there's definitely scope to expand into it. There are not very many cheerleading teams in Europe. That's what's so great about a niche market: they can only go to you because there are so few companies that provide what they need.
Within five years, Chantal believes she will grow her business enough to face inevitable competition head-on. The growing popularity of the sport in the UK was demonstrated in 2013 by the BBC television programme “My Team the Cheerleaders,” and there is now a campaign to make cheerleading an Olympic sport.
There is, however, more to her company than pure business. Chantal has a strong identity as a composer and producer and feels frustration at the focus on chart music that teams demand in their mash-ups. She is at the mercy of what teams want but holds a strong desire to change this:
There's a music company in America called Cheer Sounds, who did this brilliant marketing on Facebook. Even people who weren't cheerleaders saw it. They made an original poppy kind of song advertising their business, which was basically like a cheer; it had the right tempo and the right length and it was really cool: “We're Cheer Sounds, we make original music.” I think that might take off and the teams might want original music. I haven't heard any teams use a mix like that yet. But it's still a new area.
Recently, British teams have been featuring voice-overs that reinforce team identity. Again, Chantal is watching this trend to see where she should move in terms of her own aesthetic approach:
Back in December less than 50% of the teams had voice-overs and now there's probably 60%, or maybe 70% of the teams starting to use them, so I assume that will grow. When that has run its course something new will come in, and it'll be cool if it's something more original – like the team's own actual song, rather than a mash-up of other songs.
Chantal’s customer base began locally, serving her own university team, and then developed through a network of teams. Knowing the genre of music thoroughly because of her active involvement with cheerleading, she creates tailor-made music for each client. There is a standardized tempo of 145 b.p.m., with slight variations, and a sonic style she describes this way:
Highly energetic, dance-y, tons of sound effects. I mix different instrumentals together underneath different acapellas of songs: a mash-up of eight to ten songs in one two-and-a-half-minute track; each song has to be in a different section of the routine. I program my own drumbeats.
She must work quickly and to order for specified competitions. At the moment, she is developing the company by working at lower levels of the sport, marketing her business as the lowest-priced in the genre.
On the advice of the PRS, she obtained a license for 1,000 tracks per year, which she can increase as the company expands. This arrangement gives her flexibility and is accepted by the PRS because the squads perform in venues already licensed for music use.
Social media is a vital marketing tool. Normally Chantal sends one tweet a day, but during competition season:
I just don't stop. Every single minute, every single team that competes, I will tweet. They then respond: “Oh, Synergy Sounds just said something really nice about us!” or, “Oh look, we can get live updates about the competition that we're not at.” So people can see what's actually happening at the competition — I'm like the news feed.
Post-competition, this can bring around 3,000 views on Twitter and is an efficient way to drum up business. Another initiative is a promotion for groups to get a free cheer mix by entering a prize draw:
I've been tweeting constantly, every single day, asking people to enter their details on my website to potentially win a free cheer mix; all entrants will get 15% off any orders as an incentive. So even if they don't win, I can email them all in future.
This is hard work. Competitions sometimes run from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Chantal travels all around Britain to sports arenas such as Birmingham NEC, Bournemouth BIC, and Telford International Centre.
Chantal’s identification of her mother’s dentistry practice as a positive inspiration for her own company is interesting. Kariv (2013, p. 56) cites “a strong body of evidence that links entrepreneurs to parents who are themselves entrepreneurs.” This pattern holds true here. As a female producer, Chantal sees her mother as a role model; although she works in an entirely different field, her mother’s advanced technical experience, networking ability, and business skills were likely prominent in her upbringing. She acquired much of her necessary business knowledge from online sources and partly through trial and error.
A large bill from HMRC for National Insurance taught her to apply for an exemption, for instance. She cites making mistakes as a vital part of her learning process:
You freak out at first: “Why is this happening?” and then you learn the whole process after that. You just have to be willing to do your research, willing to learn, willing to hit dead ends, to make mistakes, to fail. Failing is the biggest learning curve of all. When you hit rock bottom the only way you can go is up, so you've just got to keep positive and go from there.
Chantal can also motivate herself and work completely alone. During our conversation, she frequently referred to “we,” which made me wonder if she had a partner. Later, without prompting, she explained that as a sole trader, she is concerned about inspiring confidence in what she can deliver. As a professional practice, she hints at a larger operation behind her activities to encourage clients’ confidence, and she understands she will need to hire people in the future as orders increase.
Although an unusual facet of music production, Synergy Sounds follows a pattern common to the creative industries. The “cultural cluster” Chantal finds herself in is unusually widespread physically and is held together by social media. The “independent enterprises acting interdependently in complex and specialized ways” identified by Rae (2007, p. 56) combine amateur and professional activities that Chantal capitalized on through her insider’s knowledge of cheerleading. This type of entrepreneurship, as Rae puts it, is “the intelligent application of skill” (ibid, p. 57). In addition to Internet connectivity, her business has been helped by the growth in home computer technology, allowing her to participate in “the creation of new subgenres and musical phenomena” (Anderton, Dubber and James, 2013, p. 83). There is also no doubt that as a female producer, the access afforded by a laptop has made her professional journey much less difficult.
For a business like Synergy Sounds, integrating original music production into the world of sports competition, which straddles the fuzzy divide between amateur and professional, is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage lies in clarity of what is required and the fact that new, more up-to-date music will likely be needed at regular intervals to ensure currency and variety. The disadvantage is that increasing popularity will bring more competition, especially from larger companies that may add the genre to their portfolio with more robust promotion. Her non-mainstream business and innovative use of the Internet illustrate Anderson’s observations about new ways of running a company in the 21st century.
Long tail theory depends on two major factors: a feeling of optimism by the supplier and the solvency of the purchaser. Anderson mentions his surprise at supermarket aisles in the US packed with unusual jams (2009, pp. 170-172); the manager told him they are very popular. To follow the analogy, can we imagine a home larder packed with jars of unusual jam past their sell-by date, while simpler, more traditional flavours are regularly consumed and replaced? Niche markets are risky; they are not infinite, often depending on volatile factors and sometimes obscurity. Despite the advantages of the Internet as a supply and marketing tool, small businesses still face common problems, summarized by Rae:
…finding and attracting their market to grow the demand for their businesses; attracting able people, financial and technical resources; making strategic choices on how to compete, collaborate and specialize in order to adapt to a changing environment; and, at a personal level, considering whether a long-term career in the creative industries is sustainable, since certain segments of these industries are dominated by fashion, taste and a young demographic (op.cit. p. 59)
To summarize, Chantal combines excellent sound engineering skills, extensive knowledge of current musical trends, awareness of international cheerleading activity, and up-to-date business and marketing skills to work as a sole trader in music production for a niche market. After the initial idea, her financial investment consisted of purchasing and maintaining a computer and software, plus travel and accommodation. The time investment requires dedication and energy — common factors for entrepreneurs in any industry.
To demonstrate that entrepreneurial skills and the supporting work ethic have become part of the role of any contemporary studio practitioner, even within mainstream practice, the subject of my second case study is Helen Atkinson, an engineer at RAK Studios in St John’s Wood, London. Helen is in her early 30s and has frequently been self-employed; she has recently specialised in recording live broadcasts. Unlike Chantal, she did not go to university but entered the industry straight after school, and rather than servicing a niche industry alone, she joined a mainstream organisation, albeit by branding herself as a specialist within that industry. Rather than creating her own business from scratch, Helen negotiated her way through various roles as a sound engineer. She spent 18 months as a junior engineer at Ridge Farm residential studio, where she was eventually replaced by a more senior engineer when business slowed, followed by a period sending out hundreds of CVs to studios: “Everybody that was listed in the Showcase book that I could get to within an hour or so in my car or by train.” She describes “luck and good timing” as factors in her opportunity to work at RAK. There was no identifiable “big opportunity” that came her way, but an approach to work that she felt helped her:
Every client that you get on board and that wants to use you, you have to be aware of the opportunities that might come up and be open to giving something a go that's not necessarily within your comfort zone.
Helen convinced RAK they needed her as an in-house engineer at a time when they were exclusively using freelancers. Small things — making sure microphones had clips, screens were cleaned, pianos returned to their rightful place — were being overlooked. She said, “I made a role for myself here at RAK and then I made it so they needed me here, and I made it so that they've continued to need me here.”
Retained as a part-timer, she also freelances for The X Factor, creating mixes for iTunes of Saturday night live TV shows that go on sale at midnight. She records festivals for Abbey Road Live and recorded the sound at the O2 in London for the film One Direction: This Is Us (directed by Morgan Spurlock for Sony, 2013). One of the most useful skills she has, she says, is the ability to read music:
I was in the school choir and things like that, so I could read music, which isn't a key aspect of being an engineer. But actually people kind of like it, and they know that it's another thing that means you're more flexible — it means they can put you on a string session where you might need to follow a score, or they could put you on an orchestral session. As a child, I had learned the Kodaly method for seven years, which I think gave me a great foundation in music.
Her classical training thus adds to the hinterland of knowledge Helen brings to the job, potentially linking cultural and subcultural capital in a very practical way. “Unseen” skills like this contribute to the smooth passage of cultural change, whether commercial or purely aesthetic, and can pull a niche genre toward the mainstream. Rae cites the importance of cultural diffusion to the development of the creative industries in Britain, because of:
…deep-seated discontinuities in British life between ‘the creative’ and ‘the mainstream’ which stem from long-standing differences in cultural, educational, social and economic contexts and which affect interactions between the creative economy and the other constituencies (2007, p. 54)
Conclusion
The flexibility of the digital world facilitates a seamless route between creative activity and the market. It repurposes digital information — seen here in Chantal’s recycling of hit tracks into tailor-made mash-ups that perfectly match gymnastic routines — and markets the resulting product through the same computer screen. With a few drags and clicks, the product can be sent anywhere in the world instantly. As a micro-entrepreneur, Chantal may find herself challenged in the future by what Leadbeater terms “the missing middle” (1999, p. 12), the bridge between her one-person company and the expansion necessary to survive inevitable competition. He comments that “businesses based on service provision often go through a period of feast, followed by a famine; they have been so busy delivering their current projects that they cannot find the time to sell new ones” (ibid. p. 27). Will Chantal need to diversify as she expands? She plans to employ others to handle aspects of the work she does not enjoy as much, but the income must be there for her to make that commitment. Capital investment may become an option, but many entrepreneurs feel this weakens the focus of their business and their direct connection with its products (ibid. p. 23).
For both practitioners, social capital — another term coined by Pierre Bourdieu — is vital. The producer Richard Burgess summarizes his practice with the wry comment, “Good connections are essential — you’ll never see an ad for a record producer.” He continues: “Job satisfaction is extremely high. [but] When you finally think you’ve got it all pinned down, reality intervenes to explain that the only constant is change” (Burgess, 1997, p. 228). For Helen, embracing this change is embedded in a sense of teamwork:
I think it's probably one of those genuine industries where it really is a meritocracy and people don't come into work because it's regular or because they have to turn up every day; they want to turn up every day and work with a team that they like to work with. So finding that team that you fit well with, personality-wise, skills-wise, that's really important.
In contrast, Chantal’s sense of social context is forged through her embeddedness in the sport she services. For both, proactivity is a vital element in their self-management (Kariv, 2013, pp. 520-522). Part of the charm of Chantal’s business lies in its story, giving her a unique selling point as an entrepreneur. Her practice is a logical development from production methods described by Negus, where the “entrepreneurial mode” meets the “art mode” in a collective-synthetic approach (op.cit. p. 88). The main difference between the two producers described above is the degree of risk each faces. Helen is as good as her last project but has a strong reputation as a reliable and talented engineer. Chantal responds to the “chaos and disorder” Negus identifies, which is to a degree ordered by the Internet. Yet even Anderson admits that “for the vast majority of us who live, work or play in the Tail, the cultural shift towards minority taste is already bringing a richer, more vibrant culture. How and when the money will follow is something that the next few decades will reveal” (op.cit. p. 254). In other words, it is people’s ability to buy niche products that wags the Long Tail. Negus concludes that “The music industry is not organized around
Mechanical inputs or outputs, and the linear transmission of products straight from producer to consumer, do not define the process either. As one source notes (p. 154), the journey is far less stable, “riddled with fluctuations and bifurcations.” The online distribution model Anderson portrays is actually a far fuzzier shape than he suggests. Of the two case studies, one could argue Chantal’s path carries greater risk; yet by staying adaptable and positive, both Chantal and Helen are likely to continue thriving as music producers. Their ability to adapt reflects a trait that has always underpinned studio work: a willingness to experiment with new ideas and technologies. In the UK, for instance, demand for cheer music is a comparatively recent development. So too is the appetite for live versions of songs originally performed on television talent shows. As music technology and distribution platforms keep evolving, new genres will inevitably emerge, creating fresh hurdles for those entering the industry — as Synergy Sounds illustrates. Yet even on the mainstream side, shifting practices and market demands are clear, exemplified by Helen Atkinson racing to produce X-Factor tracks for iTunes. Other employment routes are also opening up. These include specialized mastering, cutting, and manufacturing for the growing vinyl revival, as well as the digital archiving of vintage analogue material from
record labels and public collections like the National Sound Archive. Such work requires engineers skilled not only in shellac, vinyl, and tape transfer but also in genre-specific listening and production. For label groups such as Beggars Group, this activity is commercially viable and boosts digital music sales. For public archives, however, funding remains tight, presenting its own obstacle. This area may grow out of the commercial audio activities already described: could a resourceful team of audio professionals corner the market for what might prove a very long-lasting and potentially lucrative process?
Undoubtedly, still-unimagined genres and purposes for recorded music — both mainstream and subcultural — will catch the industry off guard. Despite how volatile music audiences can be, cultural and economic stasis is avoided only by betting on the ideas, risk-taking, and potential success of entrepreneurs. Niche ventures collectively enrich our diverse cultural experience, a point Anderson made when describing culture not as “one big blanket, but as the superposition of many different threads, each of which is individually addressable and connects different groups of people simultaneously” (pp. 183–184).
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