Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.
This research presents a critical examination of the UK Singles Chart (colloquially known as ‘the charts’). The research will consider how the charts present a cultural consensus on what is deemed to be popular and of use-value, the politics of challenging this consensus, as well as how charts influence popular music heritage and an understanding of the past. Charts encapsulate and promote cultural relevance and importance. For chart entries, it creates a historical context away its structural and compositional makeup. The story of the UK Singles Chart spans over 70 years of cultural history, and though the chart has served to reflect and influence popular music and societal shifts throughout this period, its function within popular culture is seldom explored directly in academia. This, arguably, is an unusual occurrence given how charts are crucial in both representing the taste of audiences while perpetually promoting chart entries even further. Though sales and consumption charts are not unique to the UK, the research will also detail how the British public embraced the charts as light entertainment, especially during its formative years, when charts were not just mechanism to present data but a weekly cultural event worthy of attention. 2025 will mark seventy years since ‘Rock Around the Clock’ reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart – the first American rock ‘n’ roll record to grace the UK’s top chart position. Amidst fellow UK chart toppers by adult-orientated singers such as Eddie Calvert, Alma Cogan, and Rosemary Clooney, its chart success symbolized changing times, youth culture disrupting the status quo, with the charts serving to document and further propagate these revolutions.
News reports have indicated that the number of hit songs by bands have declined over time. Possible reasons for this are organized into five theoretical areas: a decline in the popularity of rock, technology allowing for solo projects, social media rewarding individuals, financial incentives being better for solo artists, and record labels not being interested in bands. Within these reasons, a portion of the blame has been pointed toward Spotify and their use of algorithms. A data set of the top 20 songs from Billboard’s annual Hot 100 chart for the years 1961 to 2023 was constructed and ordinary least squares was employed to test whether or not this decline in hits by bands had actually occurred. Next, a two sample t-test and the Mann-Whitney test was used to determine whether Spotify could be to blame. It was found that the number of hit songs by bands has had a statistically significant decline over the years included in the study. However, Spotify is not to blame for this decline as the trend began years before Spotify came to the U.S. There is evidence that points to changes in consumer tastes and preferences as the decline in hit songs by bands correlates to an increase in the number of hits made with collaborations, in particular an increase in hip-hop songs utilizing collaborations.
The one constant in the music industry is change. At the university level, a contemporary music industry program requires elements that provide visibility into these dynamics. As music, media, and technology continue to converge, training needs to go beyond preparing students for fields in traditional recorded music environments, but across the industry of the arts. At Monmouth University, we've updated our program to stay in lockstep with this dynamic business. One of those components is Blue Hawk Records, the student-run record label. Blue Hawk Records carries out the functions of a commercial recording company, with students holding all requisite roles and positions inherent in the corporate model. Students are able to capitalize on this specialized experience as they participate in talent scouting, performing and recording, artist management, development, and live music promotion, as well as artwork, packaging, marketing, sales and distribution in all channels. Consequently, students encounter and must scale the types of business decisions, challenges, and protocols inherent in the industry. Such a model requires a hands-on and active management team to form around the mission of producing an album, with all its challenges and benefits. Modes of critical thinking are engaged, as students are required to evaluate the full range of considerations, (both tactical and strategic) that when integrated, culminate in a viable production process, and yield a recording of which all can be proud, and that obtains worldwide visibility, sales, and streams. The student-run record label has released 28 albums since its inception in 2013. As an innovative part of the Music Industry degree program at Monmouth University, Blue Hawk Records offers an immersive and collaborative opportunity for students to obtain real-life experience in the various aspects of a recording business venture. This presentation will discuss the context and rationale for developing the student-run record label initiative, along with the methods, outcomes, and challenges of this flagship university program. Attendees will learn how schools might develop and benefit from establishing a similar program.
