Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
“Contents Expected to Speak for Themselves”: A Brief History of North American Record Retail and Self Service
Dr. Tim J. Anderson - Old Dominion University
/// ABSTRACT
To take music seriously we must address its consumption for the mode through which music is received is fundamental to understanding its social position and meaning. Music is always a social act, including the many logistical maneuvers necessary to place a record in front of a possible listener. Records are both produced and distributed through specific cultural material imaginations and practices that are focused on generating acts of association. Record retail, a severely understudied area in popular music, offers us a convenient space through which, as Will Straw, we “examine the material supports which enable music to assume its social and cultural existence” (Straw 2012, p. 229). As Straw notes, because “music arrives in our lives propped up by multiple forms of material culture”, music retail is a significant site for analysis (pg. 227). As such, this paper argues that understanding record retail’s general move from full service to self service in the 1940s and 1950s provides us not only with a new imagination of sales spaces and protocols for chains, department and independent stores alike, but a new sense of the who the customer was, including their sense of self vis a vis records. This paper draws from secondary literature regarding American and British retail, as well as trade literature discussing the necessity and advantages of moving to self-service modes of record retail. Throughout I argue that the history of self-sales strategies for records allows an understanding of music retail that is conceived as simultaneously mass and individualized. As such issues of such as record stock, music segregation and sales staff bring to questions issues of both guidance and identification, through which we gain yet another understanding of both how and why record retail has and continues to be closely associated to issues of race, class and gender.
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
“Contents Expected to Speak for Themselves”: A Brief History of North American Record Retail and Self Service
Dr. Tim J. Anderson - Old Dominion University
/// ABSTRACT
To take music seriously we must address its consumption for the mode through which music is received is fundamental to understanding its social position and meaning. Music is always a social act, including the many logistical maneuvers necessary to place a record in front of a possible listener. Records are both produced and distributed through specific cultural material imaginations and practices that are focused on generating acts of association. Record retail, a severely understudied area in popular music, offers us a convenient space through which, as Will Straw, we “examine the material supports which enable music to assume its social and cultural existence” (Straw 2012, p. 229). As Straw notes, because “music arrives in our lives propped up by multiple forms of material culture”, music retail is a significant site for analysis (pg. 227). As such, this paper argues that understanding record retail’s general move from full service to self service in the 1940s and 1950s provides us not only with a new imagination of sales spaces and protocols for chains, department and independent stores alike, but a new sense of the who the customer was, including their sense of self vis a vis records. This paper draws from secondary literature regarding American and British retail, as well as trade literature discussing the necessity and advantages of moving to self-service modes of record retail. Throughout I argue that the history of self-sales strategies for records allows an understanding of music retail that is conceived as simultaneously mass and individualized. As such issues of such as record stock, music segregation and sales staff bring to questions issues of both guidance and identification, through which we gain yet another understanding of both how and why record retail has and continues to be closely associated to issues of race, class and gender.
