Keith Negus

Biography

Keith Negus has written books on Bob Dylan, the music industry (Music Genres and Corporate Cultures) and creativity (Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value), and articles on various topics including musicians on television, globalization, narrative and the popular song, music genres, and cultural intermediaries.

Research Interest

Digitisation and the Politics of Copying in Popular Music Culture Keith Negus in collaboration with Professor John Street, University of East Anglia and Dr Adam Behr, University of East Anglia. Musicians are at the forefront of discussion around revenue loss due to copying in the music industry, yet often neglected in existing studies which focus on corporate perspectives or audience activities. This research project is investigating how the notion of original ideas and rights of access (and hence copyright) are negotiated by practicing musicians. The focus is on how musicians regard copying for both circulation and creative practice - duplicating without permission in order to circulate free copies or bootlegs; and appropriating, reusing, sampling and imitating as a way of creating new tracks and songs. The research is asking how musicians stand in relation to commercial, artistic and legal questions of originality, influence and fraud. The project examines how music is valued culturally and economically, exploring how ideas about originality are shaped by definitions of ownership and intellectual property regulations. Lyrics, Songs and Songwriters Keith Negus with Pete Astor, University of Westminster. This research emerged from a series of conversations about song lyrics, and our sense of frustration that the scholarly literature on lyrics tends to neglect the work of songwriters and the practices of songwriting. Our aim is to contribute to the study of song work, exploring the importance of musical and verbal structures as one way of challenging the pervasive emphasis on lyrics as semantic statements and poetic expression, and music as melodic contour or memorable tune. Lyrics, melodies, rhythms are important – but not always in the ways implied by theories of meaning, songwriting handbooks and descriptions of listening. Our research also aims to complement and to counter approaches to the popular song which emphasise performance (the claim that a song only exists as it is realised in particular renditions), and those that focus on apparently definitive recordings or notated sheet music. The proliferation of intermediaries in the music industry This research engages with debates about intermediation and risk by examining how the new millennium has seen a proliferation of intermediaries working within, across and out from the music industries, and a variety of new working practices and relationships in response to changes in music commerce brought about by digitalisation. As the importance of rights revenue has increased, older risks and uncertainties about musicians and their listeners have been reconfigured, compounded by the inability of music companies to understand the cultural and economic consequences of digitalisation. The research is examining how music companies have been devolving responsibility for risk, and exploring the ways that nation state and civic intermediaries have been intervening in music production.