Birmingham City University

Faculty Member, Birmingham School of Media

Reader in Music Industries Innovation

About

Andrew Dubber is Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University. He’s a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and is an internationally-renowned lecturer, author, consultant, public speaker, broadcaster and blogger.

Dubber's research interests include digital media cultures, online music enterprise, and music as culture. He's the founder of New Music Strategies and Music Think Tank, is a board member of Un-Convention, and is a member of the board of advisors for Bandcamp. His free e-book ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online‘ is required reading for musicians and independent music businesses.

Dubber regularly lectures in Music Online, Music Industry theory & practice and Music Radio Programming. He also teaches media ecology and the impact of technological change, radio documentary production, radio drama production, entrepreneurship and innovation, blogging and social media, and the digital environment as narrative space.

His public lectures have included talks on the importance of copyright reform in the digital age; the act of blogging as storytelling; the evolution of media; the impact of technological change on music; music as cultural identity; broadcasting policy and music culture; radio in the digital age; specialist music radio and online fandom; jazz consumption practices in the digital age; the impact of digital technology on human cognition; as well as online strategies for marketing and distributing independent music.

He also consults and conducts workshops in idea generation, time management, email ‘zero inbox’ strategy, and developing an innovation culture. His approach to the online mediation of music events has been adopted by artists around the world, including Nitin Sawhney and UB40, and at events such as the Scarborough Jazz Festival.

Dubber is a record producer, lapsed sound engineer, former independent jazz record label owner and manager. He’s also a whisky writer and online tasting host.

He is currently writing several books and numerous articles. Among them is a text book for undergraduates, called Understanding the Music Industries, due 2011; and another called Deleting Music, about the fact that large parts of our recorded music culture are being systematically and irrevocably lost because of the way copyright currently works.

Dubber is the inventor of a board game and has a television series in development. He’s also a DJ, a keen cyclist, record collector, avid (but inept) photographer, world traveler, typography enthusiast, Chess and Go player, confirmed Mac user and dual citizen of New Zealand and Britain.

Dubber starts a lot of projects and has a lot of ideas, most of which he gives away to anyone who will actually do something interesting with them. He currently manages nineteen websites and is keen to make that number smaller, but keeps thinking of more that he could launch.

His motto is: ‘Be helpful, be interesting’.

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