When music was still sold on physical carriers such as CDs or LPs, to maximise profits music outlets needed to carefully fill their limited shelf space with the items most likely to bring in the most income, which, assuming equal cost and physical footprint, will be the most popular titles to their clientele. This business model is known as a Blockbuster strategy, and involves heavy investment and promotion of a few select products. There was some hope that this would change in today's digital economy with minimal overheads for the artists (minimal recording and reproduction costs), retailers (no limits on shelf space, cheap promotion and distribution), and consumers (practically unlimited choice). The expectation was that retail patterns would shift to a business model of selling `less of more', taking the focus away from the elite few and allowing smaller, less well-known artists to prosper. This is known as the theory of the Long Tail (coined by Chris Anderson): while some artists still get the lion's share of the revenue, the tail of less popular music would lengthen and fatten. Surprisingly, the opposite was found to be true: the tail has become even skinnier, with an even smaller proportion of artists able to make a living from their music. Research by The Harvard business review in 2008 found that 1% of artists account for 32% of total plays on the online radio station Rhapsody, with 10% making up 78% of plays. Similar figures have been quoted by music licensing company PRS music for both illegal peer-to-peer network sharing services and legal downloads, finding for example that 75% of the music stocked by online stores did not find a single buyer. A well-known explanation for this is given in the book "The Paradox of Choice", where Barry Schwartz observes that having too many options tends to be paralysing instead of liberating. Applied to the popular music market: as searching for new interesting music comes at a cost to consumers (at least an opportunity cost), they will often play it safe to avoid disappointment: they will either listen to the same old bands over and over again, or at best they will try what is recommended to them by trusted parties (friends, or automatic systems that recommend songs liked by people similar to you). As a result, the rich get richer, and revenue concentrates on the hugely popular few. This makes it increasingly hard for new music trends to gain a foothold in the music industry. Even if a pioneering band's music has a genuine potential of ultimately appealing to large consumer groups, there is only a small chance that it will ever emerge from the skinny tail of popular music. As a result, creative innovation in popular music is stymied, and new emergent music styles disappear before becoming sustainable. Thus the following question begs an answer: is it possible to detect emergent music styles at an early stage, in a scalable (and thus automated) way, characterising it in terms of its innovative audio features, demographics of the fan base, and their geographical location. Today, for the first time, all stars necessary for doing this are aligned. We have access on a large scale to the audio of a number of bands of the order of a million (e.g. on SoundCloud), and we have access to their fan base and their properties through social media (e.g. Twitter). The subject of this proposal is to gather this data, and to develop the data mining techniques needed to discover new emerging music styles at a very early stage. This proposal would thus provide the tools necessary for an entirely new way of recommending music that is able to put in the spotlight music that is truly original, currently budding among a small set of fans with a specified demographic and geographical location. Rather than oppressing new trends (as current recommendation strategies do), it would make it possible to actively promote them, and in this way to give new air to creativity.

Over the last decade, the creative industries have been revolutionised by the Internet and the digital economy. The UK, already punching above its weight in the global cultural market, stands at a pivotal moment where it is well placed to build a cultural, business and regulatory infrastructure in which first movers as significant as Google, Facebook, Amazon or iTunes may emerge and flourish, driving new jobs and industry. However, for some creators and rightsholders the transition from analogue to digital has been as problematic as it has been promising. Cultural heritage institutions are also struggling to capitalise upon new revenue streams that digitisation appears to offer, while maintaining their traditional roles. Policymakers are hampered by a lack of consensus across stakeholders and confused by partisan evidence lacking robust foundations. Research in conjunction with industry is needed to address these problems and provide support for legislators. CREATe will tackle this regulatory and business crisis, helping the UK creative industry and arts sectors survive, grow and become global innovation pioneers, with an ambitious programme of research delivered by an interdisciplinary team (law, business, economics, technology, psychology and cultural analysis) across 7 universities. CREATe aims to act as an honest broker, using open and transparent methods throughout to provide robust evidence for policymakers and legislators which can benefit all stakeholders. CREATe will do this by: - focussing on studying and collaborating with SMEs and individual creators as the incubators of innovation; - identifying "good, bad and emergent business models": which business models can survive the transition to the digital?, which cannot?, and which new models can succeed and scale to drive growth and jobs in the creative economy, as well as supporting the public sector in times of recession?; - examining empirically how far copyright in its current form really does incentivise or reward creative work, especially at the SME/micro level, as well as how far innovation may come from "open" business models and the "informal economy"; - monitoring copyright reform initiatives in Europe, at WIPO and other international fora to assess how they impact on the UK and on our work; - using technology as a solution not a problem: by creating pioneering platforms and tools to aid creators and users, using open standards and released under open licences; - examining how to increase and derive revenues from the user contribution to the creative economy in an era of social media, mash-up, data mining and "prosumers"; - assessing the role of online intermediaries such as ISPs, social networks and mobile operators to see if they encourage or discourage the production and distribution of cultural goods, and what role they should play in enforcing copyright. Given the important governing role of these bodies should they be subject to regulation like public bodies, and if so, how?; - consider throughout this work how the public interest and human rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy, and access to knowledge for the socially or physically excluded, may be affected either positively or negatively by new business models and new ways to enforce copyright. To investigate these issues our work will be arranged into seven themes: SMEs and good, bad and emergent business models; Open business models; Regulation and enforcement; Creators and creative practice; Online intermediaries and physical and virtual platforms; User creation, behaviour and norms; and, Human rights and the public interest. Our deliverables across these themes will be drawn together to inform a Research Blueprint for the UK Creative Economy to be launched in October 2016.