" For the Love of Music - Crossing the technological divide; an examination of the impact of digital disruption on issues of social reproduction, mental health and inequality in the working lives of the music workforce in the UK.”
Creators: name: Gross, Sally-anne
Publisher: name: University of Westminster
Year: 2024

description: This thesis presents a portfolio of work that, from different angles, asks what it might mean to “manage music” in the digital age, paying particular attention to questions of mental health, equality of opportunity, access, and visibility. It comprises eight pieces of collaborative and single-authored work. At its core is a jointly authored monograph titled Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition, published by University of Westminster Press, grounded in two substantial research reports of the same name, the first quantitative, the second qualitative, commissioned by the music charity Help Musicians UK. These are supplemented by: two policy-facing contributions (one collaborative and one solo authored); a follow-up multi-authored journal article published in Psychology of Music; and two single-authored chapters in edited collections, the first exploring the significance of recording contracts and the second exploring music activism during the pandemic . Although pursued through an ethos of collaboration, all these works are driven by the distinctively hybrid personal, professional, and theoretical approach that I have developed over a career as a music manager, educator, researcher, and feminist. The introductory framing statement makes my own contribution clear and discusses the significant impact of this body of work, within industry, research and learning contexts.

Can Music Make You Sick? the original empirical research report, surveyed professional musicians, aspiring musicians, and workers within the music industries, about the relationship between their working conditions and their wellbeing. It revealed that, irrespective of genre, musicians appeared to be suffering from anxiety and depression in large numbers. 71.1% of all respondents admitted to having suffered from panic attacks and/or high levels of anxiety and 68.2% suggested they had suffered from depression. The second part of the study consisted of 26 in-depth interviews. The interviewees suggested that although they all found solace and enjoyment in the performance and production of music, they often experienced their working lives as traumatic. The subsequent monograph places these findings within wider literature and a theoretical examination of changes in the digital production and distribution of music, and of how musical work is itself understood. In doing so it challenges the popular positive narrative of the democratisation of music production, it concludes that the practices and precarity of the working conditions of musical labour impacts these workers in three significant ways; economically, socially, and psychologically. The last of these claims was empirically tested in a separate study, also presented here.

There is an urgent need to draw attention to how such changes impact the mental health and wellbeing of music professionals. Together this multi-disciplinary portfolio addresses some of the conditions of contemporary music labour and suggests ways to support this workforce and places these issues within wider questions of social reproduction.