CfP: 16th International Music Business Research Days (11-13,06.2025, University of Hertfordshire’s School of Creative Arts and Law School) Deadline: 17.3.2025
16th International Music Business Research Days – ‘Music 2025 and Music IP’
June 11th-13th 2025, University of Hertfordshire’s School of Creative Arts and Law School
Deadline: 17.3.2025
Music business research is an interdisciplinary field located at the intersection of artistic, musical, cultural, social, legal, economic and technological understandings of the creation, distribution, remuneration and use of music. This interdisciplinary nature of the field entails a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches and an openness to scholars from different academic fields.
The over-arching conference theme is ‘Music 2025 and Music IP’. We aim to celebrate the manifesto first set out at IMBRD in Vienna in 2014 which led to the Music 2025 research project published in 2019 and subsequent campaigns in the UK and beyond. Campaigns such as #brokenrecord and the UK Government parliamentary investigations into the economics of streaming and calls for the reform of remuneration and improvement in music metadata practices throughout the whole digital music supply chain.
The conference organisers invite scholars (from the postdoctoral level on) who have a research focus on music business/industry related topics to submit a paper proposal for the conference day on Thursday June 12th, 2025. Scholarly submissions on this year’s conference theme are equally welcome as are other aspects of music business research.
For students at all levels of the MA or PhD programmes, a doctoral colloquium – the Young Scholars' Workshop (YSW) – will be held as part of the 16th IMBRD on Wednesday June 11th, 2025.
Indicative themes include but are not limited to
• Past, current and future developments in the music industry (recorded/live/publishing/retailing/wholesaling, etc.)
• Economic and historic analyses of music markets, charts or audiences
• Music and AI
• Music and Metadata
• Music IP Rights Investments – the increased value of Music IPR
• Music Rights , Contracts and Remuneration –#broken record campaign
• Music and trademarks – including counterfeit merchandise
• Issues in marketing and/or branding music, musicians or music institutions
• Music management new models
• Musical and musician diversity in the music business
• Algorithmic playlisting in streaming
• Emerging market insights including Africa, Latin America and Asia
Friday June 13th, 2025, is the Music industry conference day for which we have planned a variety of different presentations from UK and International music trade bodies to critically examine and debate the current state of music business including improving remuneration, providing more transparency in contractual arrangements, greater awareness of metadata and improving music creators’ lives.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Please submit your abstract by March 17th, 2025, to president[att]imbra[dot]info
Abstracts should be between 300-500 words (any references are included in the word count) and should include:
• Objectives of the research and research question
• Brief description of the disciplinary/theoretical context/background
• Research questions and/or hypotheses
• Data and methods
• Main or expected conclusions/contribution
• Main references
Abstracts will be subject to a peer review process by an international jury, and authors will
be notified of acceptance by April 17th , 2025.
REGISTRATION FEE
Registration will be open from until June 11th , 2025. The fee includes conference attendance, welcome reception (June 10th), coffee and lunch breaks and the conference dinner (June 13th).
The Registration/Conference fee is £200 for attendees and £150 for IMBRA & GMM Members. The student rate is £75.
IJMBR SPECIAL ISSUE
The best papers from the conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR). Complete eligible submissions for this special issue should be sent to the IJMBR Editor on or before June 30th , 2025.
Final submissions should not exceed 7,000 words (including abstracts, figures, tables, references and appendices) and should follow the author guidelines of the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR).
An initial selection of papers will be chosen by the editors after the conference, followed by a double-blind peer review process.
IMBRA CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
The conference is organised by the Schools of Creative Arts and Law School University of Hertfordshire and the Conference Organiser is Dennis Collopy, Senior Research Fellow, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.
Please find more information on the organizer’s website.