‘The song factories have closed!’: songwriting camps as spaces of collaborative creativity in the post-industrial age

Herbst, Jan-Peter and Ahlers, Michael and Barber, Simon (2024) ‘The song factories have closed!’: songwriting camps as spaces of collaborative creativity in the post-industrial age. Creative Industries Journal. ISSN 1751-0694

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Abstract

This article explores ‘songwriting camps’, a contemporary form of collaborative music creation initiated primarily by record labels and music publishers but also by producers and enthusiasts. In such camps, musicians produce songs for various purposes, from commercial exploitation to self-actualization. This research explores the origins of industrialized songwriting, collaborative songwriting practices, and current thinking on creativity and copyright with a view to interrogating how songwriting camps relate to commercial songwriting practices in popular music since the early twentieth century. We find that camps have a proven track record of producing commercially successful pop songs and are deemed beneficial by songwriters for developing their careers and skills, networking, gaining industry contacts, and generating royalty income. We argue that while camps have adapted to the post-industrial age, characterized by digital music creation tools aiding musicians, they owe more to the past than is perhaps acknowledged. Songwriting camps are a microcosm in which many of the same tensions, strategies, goals, and relationships can be observed as in past structures from the Brill Building era, or organizations like Motown. Camps draw on features from these historical examples, such as: strategic, time-limited collaboration, clearly delineated roles, friendly competition among writers, and group evaluation.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.1080/17510694.2024.2366163
Dates:	Date Event 5 June 2024 Accepted 29 June 2024 Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords:	songwriting, songwriting camps, popular music, creativity, music industry, music production
Subjects:	CAH24 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01-05 - media studies
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > College of English and Media
Depositing User:	Simon Barber
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2024 14:24
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2024 14:36
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15929

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