Michael Ahlers

Leuphana University, Institute of Arts, Music, and Mediation, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

Michael Ahlers studied music education, musicology and German. He worked as an editor-in-chief for a quarterly journal on ICT in music education. Also he ran a company for music and media production in Hamburg. After finishing his dissertation he worked as a junior lecturer on popular music and media studies at the University of Paderborn.
In 2010 he became Professor for Digital Music Education at the University of Augsburg. In 2012 he became Professor for music education and popular music in Lueneburg.
His recent research activities include collaborative creative strategies, post-digitality, literacy and special language knowledge in task construction, as well as research on empirical music education and popular music studies.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2678-9236
Phone: +49 4131 6772581
Address: Universitaetsallee 1, C16.216
21335 Lueneburg
Germany

less

Paul Long

Monash University

Simon Barber

Birmingham City University

Jörg Sydow

Freie Universität Berlin

Tobias Theel

Riikka Hiltunen

University of Helsinki

Dr. Phil Harding

Leeds Beckett University

Dr Paul Thompson

Leeds Beckett University

Zoraida Santiago Buitrago

Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

Joe Bennett

Berklee College of Music

Matt Gooderson

University for the Creative Arts

InterestsView All (10)

Uploads

Papers by Michael Ahlers

‘The song factories have closed!’: songwriting camps as spaces of collaborative creativity in the post-industrial age

by Jan Herbst, Michael Ahlers, and Simon Barber

Creative Industries Journal, 2024

This article explores 'songwriting camps' , a contemporary form of collaborative music creation i... more This article explores 'songwriting camps' , a contemporary form of collaborative music creation initiated primarily by record labels and music publishers but also by producers and enthusiasts. In such camps, musicians produce songs for various purposes, from commercial exploitation to self-actualization. This research explores the origins of industrialized songwriting, collaborative songwriting practices, and current thinking on creativity and copyright with a view to interrogating how songwriting camps relate to commercial songwriting practices in popular music since the early twentieth century. We find that camps have a proven track record of producing commercially successful pop songs and are deemed beneficial by songwriters for developing their careers and skills, networking, gaining industry contacts, and generating royalty income. We argue that while camps have adapted to the post-industrial age, characterized by digital music creation tools aiding musicians, they owe more to the past than is perhaps acknowledged. Songwriting camps are a microcosm in which many of the same tensions, strategies, goals, and relationships can be observed as in past structures from the Brill Building era, or organizations like Motown. Camps draw on features from these historical examples, such as: strategic, time-limited collaboration, clearly delineated roles, friendly competition among writers, and group evaluation.

Michael Ahlers

Uploads

Papers by Michael Ahlers

Log In