An Introduction.
From Paper, Ink, Pritt-stick and a Love for Music, to Here. Forever and Beyond…
A cultural journey through technological change.
Welcome to my Substack. Themes include culture, society, music, and technology. My story 'Let The Good Times Roll' was published in 2022. I've worked in the music industry and the tech industry. I’m based in Brighton, UK
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Writing from my experience in the Music Industry, Media Publishing, the Silicon Valley Tech Industry and beyond.
Themes include culture, society, music, creativity and technology.
An Introduction.
I am a writer living in Brighton. I write articles, opinion, memoir, fiction, and nonfiction. Themes include culture, society, music, creativity and technology.
I grew up in the isolated rural English countryside. Music was my connection to the world beyond; the radio, weekly music press, my local library loans recorded to C90 cassette - until I could afford my most desired albums on CD with my weekend job money.
I worked in the music industry, making records at major record labels and independent labels, both as an A&R manager and as an artist. After the fallout of the recorded music industry’s golden era, I emerged as an employee in Silicon Valley big tech. Here, I gained valuable insight into the cause and effect of its hyper-growth. Throughout, I maintained a close connection to music making, artists, and my own creative projects.
My short story Let the Good Times Roll features in the anthology, Brighton and Beyond, published June 2022 (ISBN 978-1-3999-0356-1) - a story of the alienation and exploitation of an outsider living without the societal norms of tech-saturation. I wrote an article on The Cure for Record Collector published in September 2022. I’m currently working on completing a memoir. I am in the early stages of planning a novel and I’m considering a dramatisation of my short story Let The Good Times Roll .
From Paper, Ink, Pritt-stick and a Love for Music, Forever and Beyond…
I created Planet of Sound music fanzine in the late 1990s, with paper, ink, Pritt-stick and a love for music. My fanzine often sold out in Rough Trade shops. I wrote for Rock Sound and was a founding writer, columnist, and A&R Editor at CMU magazine (syndicated to all UK Universities). At EMI Records as A&R manager, I had 12 hit records (I also worked at Universal Music and Ignition Management). A musician and producer, works include two albums as Architects of Grace.
Leaving EMI Records after my successes with only my record collection and suitcase of clothes to my name, the recorded music industry had begun its decline with the impact of mass online piracy. I sought income. I began working in digital media publishing and soon for Silicon Valley’s initial presence in Europe, at start-ups, and then Facebook. The emerging theory of digital equality and “making the world open and connected” seemed a good idea. What could possibly go wrong?
Eight years later, I walked out.
The tech revolution has brought as many challenges as it has opportunities.
I’m first-hand witness to the decimation of the recorded music industry’s ecosystem, the collapse of a major label. Six major labels became three. The demise of label funded artist development has contributed directly to a further decline of access to the arts for the working and lower middle-classes.
Headlines about music streaming success are not reflected in artists’ pockets.
For over two decades, the creative industries have suffered hugely in the face of dominant new powers of digital distribution and communication, to a large extent, the latter profiteering solely from works posted to their platforms, the audiences and resulting multi-billion-dollar ad revenue created.
I believe strongly that creative works, journalism, and IP rights must be respected, that contributors to 21st century culture must be better funded and rewarded for their work than they are today.
This story evolves.
Thanks for reading and supporting.
Duncan.
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My playlist No.1; a central axis point of taste.
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My music taste is very broad, at its centre The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode. I could be listening to Electric Wizard, Coil, Brian Eno, PJ Harvey, My Bloody Valentine, Bowie, The Virgin Prunes, Dizzy Gillespie, Nilüfer Yanya, Echo & the Bunnymen, PiL, Kraftwerk, Deftones, Boy Harsher, or traditional Arabic folk music played on ouds, at any given time.
I love discovering new music and new artists.
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