On Disintermediated Culture, Education, and Craft.

Abstract

Consumer technologies and web 2.0 networks bring liberating potentials to music-making while simultaneously challenging recent conceptions of professional practice. These effects are felt strongly in Western tertiary education institutions, now increasingly held accountable to a central responsibility for an expanded role in the cultural and commercial innovation environment. This article examines this convergence in order to better understand the imperatives for the education of next generation professional musicians. It does so by arguing an interdisciplinary approach to span preconceived assumptions about music genres, technology and specialised curricula. A wider investigation of 'music 2.0' is positioned as an endpoint for the article and as an invitation for further collaborative research in this field.