The Evolution of Corporate Sponsorship in Sensitive Cultural Spheres (2015)

The Evolution of Corporate Sponsorship in Sensitive Cultural Spheres in the Early 21st Century:Lessons from a Culture-Producing Marketing Unit

FABIAN HOLT

The conference »Precarious Genres« held at theFree University of Berlin in April 2014 explored arange of perspectives on genre in contemporaryculture and cultural theory. Genre continues tohave relevance to the humanities as a concept forunderstanding distinctions embedded in culturalhistory and how those distinctions structurecontemporary artistic, social, and economicpractices across the cultural landscape. Genrecontinues to serve as a discursive tool in thehumanities for organizing fields of inquiry.

Titled »Precarious Genres: Small, Peripheral, Minor, Apocryphal and Liminal Genres, Forms and Species,« the conference looked beyond conventional narratives of boundary issues in genre studies. The invitation I received from the organizers on the first day of 2014 asked

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»how continuity is sustained in these kinds of genres despite their small size and lack of mainstream power.« My contribution to the discussion evolved from an exploration of the changing location of independent jazz, rock, andelectronic music in the early 21st century. A specific change in the cultural economy, namely the evolution in sponsorship, plays a key role in the changing location of indie genres and a broader restructuring of the cultural landscape.On the surface, dominant narratives accompanyingsponsorship seem to suggest that 20th-century dichotomies of art and commerce have disappeared. This chapter argues that the relationship between the two has changed but that tensions still exist and are articulated innew and subtle forms of precariousness. In the context of intensified commercial developments in culture markets, declining arts subsidies, and the rising costs of living in contemporary cities, even seemingly small benefits from sponsorship—such as a few extra performances andextra media exposure—have great importance for artists in a relatively obscure cultural scene with limited resources. Artists are vulnerable to these new and more precarious economic conditions, as we shall see. In seeking solutions to the challenges, however, we need tosituate the individual corporate strategy in macro-level social and economic changes.

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The humanities have long participated in powerformations in the sensitive cultural sphere. Asthe base of the humanities expanded from theelites to middle-class-based narratives in thelate 20th century, the power dynamics changed.Indeed, the humanities no longer adopt theperspective of looking at the market and atpopular culture from the outside. This situationcomplicates the analysis of the human condition inneoliberalism. With its narratives of individualself-government and private enterprise as theideal model of social action, neoliberalism is aprecarious human condition, if there ever was one.At this historical level, the chapter is ananalysis of one evolution in the neoliberalconfiguration of culture and society, namely, thesweeping economic and territorial expansion ofcultural sponsorship.

It should be clear from the outset that thechapter conceives of cultural sponsorship as aparticular form of exchange between economic andsocial value, implicated in the same basic marketdynamics, forms of exploitation, and powerasymmetries as many other arenas of commerce inmodern societies. The chapter focuses on theevolution of sponsorship into cultural spheresthat have, until recently, been sensitive totensions between art and commerce. In particular,the chapter focuses on musical cultures that onceheld anti-corporate attitudes and aspired to highlevels of artistic autonomy. These values haveevolved beyond the conventional spheres of artmusic since at least the advent of modern jazz inthe 1940s, and they contrast with conventionalpopular culture discourse in which commercialinterests can be more explicit and commercialsuccess can be a measure of cultural value.1

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The chapter examines how this sponsorshipevolution in sensitive spheres is developedprofessionally within industry contexts through acase study of an extraordinary global venture ofthe Red Bull Corporation. The Red Bull MusicAcademy (RBMA), developed by the advertisingagency Yadastar in Cologne in the late 1990s, wascommissioned by Red Bull’s headquarters in Austriato expand its model of sports sponsorship intomusic.2 Red Bull looked to music as the second maincultural platform for its brand. RBMA presents acomplex innovation in conventional genres ofcorporate sponsorship and marketingcommunications. It can be seen as a sponsorshipproject because its basic function is to promotethe brand through cultural events. However, withhundreds of events every year around the globe forsixteen years and counting, and withorganizational expansion, consolidation, andintegration with the Red Bull Corporation, RBMA isnot simply a project in the hands of an externaladvertising agency. It has taken on properties asa marketing unit within the corporation and as aninstitution within the music world. Yet, projectdynamics are cultivated to sustain a focus on theexperience of individual activities and to graspthe vital elements of the present, while keepingits long-term relation with sensitive culturalspheres implicit. To some extent, RBMA is amarketing-driven cultural institution without thepolitical and public constraints and obligationsthat public cultural institutions have. Two of thethree core innovators of RBMA who started Yadastarhave essentially become CEOs of the global RBMAdepartment within Red Bull. They manage the globalnetwork of activities and the localizations of the


global strategy, all of which depend on theirspecialized knowledge and social skills.

The RBMA institution started as little morethan a workshop for DJs in a Berlin warehouse in1998 and grew in the following years into a globalannual event focusing on artistically ambitiouselectronic music producers, every year moving to anew global city. Each year, the two-week annualevent for musicians attracted more applicants andmedia attention and expanded with more publicconcerts; at the same time, RBMA expanded intohundreds of other events each year, from shows toworkshops and sponsored festival stages, organizedin many cases by former participants in the annualevent for musicians and supported by national RedBull offices. Although brand unity is cultivatedthrough consistent visual design and overlappingmedia channels, many of the events depart from theelite profile and producer-community orientationof the event for musicians by their appeal to massaudiences.

Red Bull’s sponsorship of music and sports canbe located in a history of corporate interest insocial capital marked by an imagined location atthe edge of mainstream modernity. Historicalexamples include advertising interest incounterculture in the 1960s and subcultures in the1980s and beyond.3 The Apple Corporation celebratedlegendary pioneers in politics, art, and science,4

and Saatchi & Saatchi sponsored avant-garde art inthe 1990s.5 Red Bull’s sponsorship of sports andmusic, however, delegates a high level of autonomyto the sponsored in developing individualactivities, effectively using elite networks inextreme sports and in electronic dance musicculture to create a global space of flows for boththe brand and the culture. The distinction between

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sponsorship and advertising is crucial herebecause the former happens through the medium of coreparticipants, activities, and experiences in the culture, while thelatter is mainly about the production of imagesfor media communications. Red Bull’s eventsproject an image of coolness, but that is nottheir only purpose. Their transnationalinfrastructure stimulates exchange betweenprofessionals in social networks around whichadvertising and sales activities are developed.

Although the scope and form of RBMA isunparalleled, it can be located within a broaderevolution in cultural sponsorship. In the 1990s,corporate sponsorship expanded from sports intoother culture markets, particularly music. At thesame time, a new paradigm of practice developed,as growing sponsorship budgets were channeled toprofessional marketing departments and a newgeneration of advertising agencies. In particular,strategists focused less on brand exposure andinstead developed more entrepreneurial andparticipant-driven projects. The market forcultural sponsorship has grown six-fold since the1980s and has never been larger than it is today.6

In thirty years, sponsorship has gone from a smallsource of income for very few to a market thatshapes the cultural economy and definesidentities, subjectivities, and core activitiesfor top-tier professionals as well as for a widerange of young, aspiring artists who participatein countless talent competitions and promotionalevents. The implication is that cultural spheresare increasingly shaped by outside interests. Thelogic of the mainstream business world is adoptedby the larger cultural sphere. Sponsorshipinvolves the transfer of ownership from thecultural sphere to the corporate sphere. At the


disciplinary level, sponsorship becomes a researchtopic not only for marketing scholars but also inthe sociology of culture.

This chapter contributes to two fields ofstudy. It evolves from long-term research onmusical cultures of cities in Western Europe andthe United States. To this field of music studiesand particularly popular music studies, myanalysis offers empirical insights into howdifferent musical networks are moving towardsponsorship; although I focus specifically on theinfluential Red Bull activities, I also suggestimplications for musical culture and for musicstudies. RBMA has not yet been subject ofscholarly research.7 Conceptually, the chapter isframed more broadly as a contribution to thesociology of the early 21st-century culturallandscape and its changing relation withmainstream corporate business. More specifically,the evolution in sponsorship is analyzed as asocial formation that involves changing values andideas of culture, with specific implications incultural production and experience. The basictenet of this chapter is that corporate marketingis changing the dynamics and structure of thecultural landscape, partially co-opting it intomainstream business by becoming more sensitive tothe rules of the cultural sphere, including genre-specific rules, and by delegating moreresponsibility to artists at the content level ofsponsorship activities. Instead of framing theargument within contemporary discussions ofcapitalism, I focus on the more specific practicesof marketing because it is a central technology ofpower. Analyzing marketing practices allows forgreater analytical specificity than analyzingcapitalism as a whole. The chapter recognizes the

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recent sociological critique of technocraticnarratives of marketing, the narratives thatconfine marketing to questions of efficiency.8 Thechapter does not provide a complete overview ofthe evolution in cultural sponsorship, but itillustrates core motivations, logics, and mediumsof sponsorship from the particular perspective ofone global sponsorship venture that exemplifiesand develops a type of sponsorship thatcrystallized in the 1990s. Known as collaborative

1 Gendron, Bernard: Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde, Chicago 2002. Frith, Simon: Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music, Oxford 1996, 41.

2 Many Ameri, interview with author, 11 March 2014.

3 Frank, Thomas: The Conquest of Cool: BusinessCulture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism,Chicago 1997.

4 Livingstone, Randall: »Better at LifeStuff: Consumption, Identity, and Class inApple’s ›Get a Mac‹ Campaign«, Journal ofCommunication Inquiry 35/3 (2011), 210–234.

5 McGuigan, Jim: Cool Capitalism, London 2009.6 Gran, Anne-Brit/Hofplass Sophie:

Kultursponsing, Oslo 2007; Hund-Göschel, Angela:Music Sponsorship at a Turning Point, Lohmar 2009;Hampp, A.: »Festival Sponsorship SpendingProjected to Set Record in 2013«, in: Billboard.biz(10 May 2013),http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1561337/festival-sponsorship-spending-projected-to-set-record-in-2013 (accessed 11August 2014).


or relational sponsorship, the sponsored party isexpected to have a more active role and integratethe strategy deeper into the cultural sphere.

The first section of the chapter explores howvarious music spheres aspiring to high levels ofartistic autonomy have started to engage with RBMAand other forms of sponsorship and advertising.Musicians have become more open to sponsorship fordifferent reasons, but popular narratives simplifythe situation when they explain the evolution byeconomic factors alone or by changes withinindividual culture industries.

The second section analyzes how RBMA buildsitself into the network of the electronic dancemusic genre, while at the same time transformingit. RBMA was developed in collaboration withleading tastemakers. The culture has become astakeholder. RBMA also adapts to conventionalspaces and micro-capitalist logics of undergroundelectronic dance music culture. A l’art pour l’artdiscourse is employed within RBMA to build anenthusiastic utopian atmosphere in which theoutside world remains distant and criticisms seem7 In January 2014, I conducted search engine research and asked music scholars and journalists who have worked for RBMA about any scholarly publications on the topic. One of the directors of RBMA, Many Ameri, did not seem to have been interviewed for a scholarly publication before.

8 Slater, Don: »Marketing as Monstrosity: TheImpossible Place between Culture and Economy.«In: Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices, ed. byD. Zwick and J. Cayla, 23-41, New York andOxford 2011.

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irrelevant. The event is a brand space thatfilters an image of the culture, but the brandonly appears as a given, and its agency is beyondthe reach of individuals. The section pays specialattention to issues of precariousness in the co-option of small and experimental genres into abrand space within mainstream culture industrystructures of ownership, production, andmarketing.

The third section examines the implications ofthis evolution for public policy and research.Sponsorship projects such as RBMA can createexperiences that are positive to many insiders ofthe culture, but they have long-term consequencesfor the culture that calls for a debate about thestate of public culture. I argue that such adebate is a challenge to current disciplinarydivisions in the literatures on advertising andpromotional culture. Drawing inspiration frompolitical economy, particularly John KennethGalbraith’s theory of affluence and socialbalance, I suggest that the most problematicaspect of the evolution in the cultural economymight be the failure of public policy to offertimely alternatives to private interests incontinuing a long history of maximizingconsumption and rationalizing inequality.

The chapter concludes that RBMA illustrates howcorporate sponsors manage to engage a wider areaof the cultural landscape but that new forms ofprecariousness arise. The precariousness is lessin the experience of the individual event than inthe workings of the event’s network infrastructurewithin sensitive cultural spheres. Critiques ofcapitalism can thus be nuanced with more attentionto how the public sector might offer alternativesto commercial culture.


The chapter is based on empirical data onsponsorship markets in the existing literature andon original data produced from research on RBMA.Data on RBMA include existing audiovisualrecordings from the events and writings aboutthem, mostly found via online search engines. Inaddition, I interviewed people who have beeninvolved with RBMA, including a handful of artistswith different genre orientations and a longinterview with Many Ameri, one of the two corepeople behind the development and management ofthe RBMA concept. Additional exploratoryinterviews were conducted in Denmark among cultureprofessionals who have worked with Red Bull andother sponsors for several years. I had specialaccess to these people as a long-term insider ofthe Copenhagen scene, but I mainly used theseinterviews for background research and for testinghypotheses. I also attended an orientation meetingfor prospective applicants for RBMA 2014.

The analysis revealed a strong focus on thecultural event as the main form of RBMAactivities. One methodical implication is that thecultural events themselves need to be analyzed asagents of strategic communication. For thisreason, the chapter analysis considers theorganization of the main annual event as crucialto the articulation of the project, which clearlyhappens more through the symbolic and spatialconfiguration of experience and performance thanthrough language and image production. Culturalevents are used as platforms for transformingconsciousness through network- and project-ledstrategies. The events are designed to createmeanings of what it means to participate, but theyalso transform consciousness of the brand and ofculture, as we shall see. Musicians and

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journalists entered the annual event with onemindset and ended up with another.

Figure 1. RBMA 2013 participant August Rosenbaum andjournalist Emma Warren during an orientation meeting forprospective RBMA 2014 applicants. Photo by author.

The Expansion of Sponsorship among Musicians

Over the past decade, Red Bull Music Academy hasbecome a household name in music industrynetworks. Its media presence can be illustrated bythe activities following the death of house musicpioneer Frankie Knuckles. He participated in oneof the many interviews with pioneer musicians thathave been produced for YouTube distribution. Thesevideos have become unique historical documents forpresent and future generations, includingjournalists, audiences, and artists. When futuremedia users search for information on artists suchas Frankie Knuckles, Brian Eno, and similar 20th-century icons, they will find unique content inthe form of hour-long high-quality video


interviews produced by Red Bull, with the logoever-present in the background. Similar materialon these artists is not available in magazines orin public media. In the case of Knuckles, a Googlesearch combining the words “Frankie Knuckles,”“Red Bull,” and “obituary” in spring 2014generated 236,000 results. Countless obituariesdirected readers to media produced by RBMA. Theobituary in Spin magazine is illustrative:

»For those who want to immerse themselves in Knuckles’musical world, Red Bull Music Academy has helpfully puttogether a YouTube playlist featuring the ›Warehouse Top50,‹ a list of 50 classic songs Knuckles spun atChicago’s Warehouse club… the club where house music wasborn.«9

The brand’s mass penetration in information flowsfollowing the death of an icon in electronic musicand the brand’s coupling to the origins of thegenre indicate just how far from the individualinterview, workshop, or performance we need tolook to see the full implications of sponsorship.By coupling the brand to an artist in onesituation, the production of meaning automaticallyunfolds in other spheres via the mediainfrastructure around that situation. The upshotis that the brand becomes embedded in the historyof a genre but not just in a passive sense. Bygaining ownership of unique historical documents,the brand also gains ownership of the culture. Thebrand also shapes how history is told and9 Sherburne, Philip: »Celebrate Frankie

Knuckles’ Life with His Warehouse Top 50«, in:Spin (1 April 2014), http://www.spin.com/articles/frankie-knuckles-warehouse-top-50-playlist/ (accessed 10 April 2014).

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remembered. Brands become new agents in culturalcanon formations and entrepreneurs of spaces forsharing memories and ideas about art and culture.RBMA moves beyond the conventional focus ofcultural sponsorship on individuals and brandambassadors to networks of producers and to formsof interaction through which meanings can grow inthe continuum of many short-term satelliteactivities and one annual global event.

A striking development in the culturalsponsorship of musicians is the growinginvolvement of artists in genres that were oncedistinctly anti-corporate and did not share themicro-capitalist sentiments of undergroundelectronic music scenes.10 Until the early 2000s,genres such as indie rock, experimental electronicmusic, and free jazz were known for their anti-corporate stance. Nonetheless, icons of these verygenres have started to appear in or have expressedinterest in appearing in events sponsored by RedBull. The record label Thrill Jockey in Chicago,for instance, was created in 1992 as a reactionagainst the corporate culture of major recordlabels. When the label celebrated its twenty-yearanniversary in 2012, it included an eventsponsored by Red Bull and a feature on RBMA Radioapplauding the label as an outlet for music thattranscends genre categories, indirectlyhighlighting transgression to overcomeconventional reservations about corporatesponsorship.11 When I was researching the Chicagoindie rock and jazz scenes in the early 2000s,Thrill Jockey’s president and many local bandspraised Chicago as a great place forexperimentation and collaboration in comparison toNew York because of more affordable housing and arelatively less invasive corporate media and


culture industry infrastructure.12 When I contacteda handful of my informants again in 2014 for acomment on their work with RBMA, none of themresponded. Among the bands featured in the RBMAradio production was the band Trans Am, whichdeclined the offer of a $100,000 advertisingcontract in the 1990s. The changes in this Chicagoindie rock network can be explained by knowledgeof broader developments in the culture, however.During the 2000s, a new indie rock industryevolved and became further integrated into themainstream music industry.13 As part of thisevolution, a sea change in the attitudes tosponsorship and advertising occurred. An interviewwith former band manager Howard Greynolds whoworked for Thrill Jockey in the 1990s isrevealing:

»Greynolds says what expedited this change wasn’t justthe huge drop in record sales, but as layoffs sweptthrough the record industry, contacts from labels anddistributors went to marketing, advertising, and brands.›All of the sudden those were the people at musichouses,‹ says Greynolds. ›People from your world. Theymight be feeding you a line of shit, but there was

10 Reynolds, Simon: Energy Flash: A Journey ThroughRave Music and Dance Culture, Berkeley/CA ²2012, 520[Kindle Edition].

11 »Thrill Jockey Special«, Red Bull Music Academy Radio, http://www.rbmaradio.com/lists/thrill-jockey-special (accessed 14 November 2014)

12 Holt, Fabian: Genre in Popular Music, Chicago2007.

13 Holt, Fabian: „Rock Clubs and Gentrification in New York City«, IASPM@Journal 4 (1), 21-41.

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trust. They were different.‹ These new players withinthe advertising industry proved to be capable navigatorsof both the ad world as well and the music underground.They could help forge lucrative connections betweenbrands and cash-strapped bands – and their fan bases.

A one-year license for an existing song by a smallerband runs from $10,000-25,000, an original compositioncan run $25,000–30,000. A marquee-name band, for ayearlong national campaign, could get $150,000 forexisting work, or up to $300,000 for an originalcomposition for a multi-year campaign. While licensingan album cut has the potential to break an album andmake a career, 30 seconds of original music pays thesame as months of intensive touring – and oftenanonymously. ›Five years ago, more bands said no, buteven five years ago, no was the exception,‹ saysMcDonough. ›A band that turned me down five years agojust came in and played in our office last week.‹ Thereare few bands that are no longer gettable; many areeager to take whatever money is on the table.«14

A broader change in attitude toward advertisingand sponsorship among musicians has also beenobserved by music scholar Tim Taylor. He recallshow, during the grunge era of the early 1990s, hisstudents would talk about selling out if a bandlicensed their music for commercials, but thatthis is no longer a common response.15 I amteaching in one of the new culture industryprograms at Scandinavian public universities wherestudents look to advertising culture as a careeropportunity and are influenced by positive14 Hopper, Jessica: »How Selling Out Saved

Indie Rock«, in: Nashville Music News (28. November2013), http://www.musicnewsnashville.com/selling-saved-indie-rock/ (accessed 7 April2014).


narratives of advertising in the media shaped bythe culture industry. It would be simplistic toconsider the growing acceptance of advertising andpromotional culture as simply generational shiftand thus rationalize it as a causal reaction todeclining record sales. Sponsorship is not justanother source of income; it involves changingrelations, roles, and conditions for artists,including artists who once held very differentviews. Little, if any, research has been conductedon the possible alienation of older generations ofamateurs and audiences in the early 21st century.

It is even more striking that Red Bull hasexpanded into musical cultures of avant-gardejazz. One of the main pioneers of the radicalCentral European free jazz movement of the 1960sand 1970s, Peter Brötzmann, was invited to lectureat RBMA 2013. It did not happen because he hadcommitted to other projects, but he wanted tocome. Brötzmann and his collaborators have alwaysoperated in circles far from the major recordlabels and popular culture media channels. Hewanted to lecture at RBMA because he hasexperienced conventional sources of income fortheir music drying up over the past decade.Additionally, he sees RBMA as a possibility toreach a new and younger audience that would nototherwise be exposed to his music. He does nottalk about the precariousness of sponsorship froman idealist perspective, as a young artist mighthave done, but instead adopts a rather pragmaticapproach:15 Harvey, Eric: »The Sounds of Capitalism«,

in: Pitchfork.com (4. February 2013),http://pitchfork.com/features/paper-trail/9048-tim-taylor/ (accessed 10 October 2014).

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Brötzmann: »For us here in Germany, we just depend onthe clubs and the festivals, and there is no supportfrom the radio stations anymore. For my kind of musicthere is nearly no support, no public support and noprivate sponsoring. If I think back, who was a privatesponsor in my career, I can’t find any kind oforganization. I find from time to time a person whogives a small amount of money that makes thingspossible.«Author: »Why do you think icons of experimental musicsuch as yourself agree to lecture at RBMA?«Brötzmann: »I think it’s fine as long as I don’t have todrink that bullshit. It’s a good idea that a thing likethe Red Bull Academy exists, and I wouldn’t say no. Itwould be great if there was more of this. Even if ourmusic is a small part of it. I was running my ChicagoTentet for the last 12-13 years, but financially it wasalways such a problem, and I had to send the guy homeafter a two-week tour with pocket money. For these kindsof things, sponsoring, whoever it is, they are welcome.I know that at RBMA people are more interested inelectronic music and rock music, but it would be greatif this Academy could help us reach a differentaudience, a younger and wider audience. The young guysare really surprised because they don’t know about theexistence of the kind of music we are doing. The problemwith our music is that we are more or less in the sameposition we were in many years ago. We always needmoney. For me and my American friends it’s always aboutsurviving. You cannot work with a large group anymorebecause there is not money for it. The groups aregetting smaller and smaller over the last fifteen years.A duo, a trio, that’s what’s possible. If I want to goon tour with a sextet or a tentet, there’s no money forthat anymore. A festival might pay a decent honorarium,but the travel expenses alone eat up at least 50%.


Also, we should not forget that music is a questionof continuity. You need time to develop things. It’s notjust for an event, you want to go further. That’simpossible without money. Compared to the early freejazz scene in New York or Chicago, people were stayingtogether in one place. That’s not happening anymore. IfI want to set up a band, I have to ask people from theUS, Scandinavia, Japan, and that costs a lot of money.There’s never time for rehearsal. To come back to themain thing, private sponsoring, whoever is interestedand willing, is always welcome. There are differentfoundations here in Germany. Volkswagen, for instance.All the big companies have foundations. But they put themoney in the fine arts to have something to hang on thewall or whatever, and we are just working on the ground.We are very modest people. We are not shiny people.Contemporary society focuses more and more on big eventsand not artistic substance and continuity.«16 (Italics byauthor)

The above quote offers fascinating insights intotransformations that can only be understood fromthe artist’s perspective but have been erased inpublic discourse and rendered old-fashionedbecause of the newly dominant interests incommercial culture as a normal condition. Theshift toward cultural events not only involvesgrowing emphasis on news value and a rhetoric ofthe extraordinary, but it also involves a shift ofemphasis from intrinsic value to external impacts,from cultural performances as platforms forculture to platforms for mainstream business andsociety.17 Growing corporate sponsorship means morepower to corporate interests and logics of brandsponsorship in sensitive cultural spheres.16 Peter Brötzmann, interview with author, 22

August 2014.

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Why is all coverage of RBMA in professionalmedia only positive? Music blogs and magazinesrely on advertising revenues and connections withthe music industry. Some of the most popularelectronic dance music publications have beeninvolved in developing the concept for RBMA and inthe selection of participants. Some of the keypeople have started working for RBMA, and some arein positions of responsibility. But what aboutnewspapers? RBMA invites (and pays all travelexpenses for) one journalist to accompany eachparticipant, with the expectation that thejournalist will report on the event for a nationalaudience. Usually this means that each country hasa journalist and often from urban, liberalnewspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times.The culture staff writers at those papersgenerally have college degrees and some knowledgeof cultural history and theory. They are familiarwith Bourdieu and Foucault. It is thereforesurprising that they fail to see the powerrelations and implications of this sponsorshiparrangement. Whatever critical thinking has beentaught to generations of students in culturalstudies, it is absent from the public discourse onRBMA and other forms of sponsorship that they areproducing. It is telling that, in recent years,the critique of the sponsorship evolution at theSouth by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin,Texas has been offered not by the day-to-day music17 Holt, Fabian: „The Dynamics of the Popular Music Festival Landscape in the Early 21st Century: Faustian Bargains and New Beginnings.« Keynote lecture, conference of the InternationalAssociation for the Study of Popular Music, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 7 November 2014.


journalists with close ties to the contemporarymusic business—the journalists reporting from RBMA—but by a rock critic of the baby boomergeneration.18

Studies of neoliberalism as a malleabletechnology of governance19 underpinned by globaleconomic deregulation, short-term employmentcontracts, precarious consultancy, and offshoreoutsourcing20 have relevance to the world ofculture professionals because they, too, areaffected by broader changes in the human conditionand make exceptions to conventional culturalethics. As in society at large, expectations andgoals are redefined within a narrative of copingwith economic change. The turn to sponsorship isnarrated as a natural reaction to declining incomefrom recordings. But the advertising industry isitself inventing cultural technologies to boostthe evolution of sponsorship. RBMA is presented as

18 Pareles, Jon: „Selling Stars, Brands and Baby Bands«, The New York Times, 17 March 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/arts/music/selling-stars-brands-and-baby-bands.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 15 November 2014). Pareles, Jon: „Big Money Upends a Festival«, The New York Times, 16 March 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/arts/music/south-by-southwest-festival-starts-to-feel-corporate.html (accessed 15 November 2014).

19 Ong, Aihwa: Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations inCitizenship and Sovereignty, Durham 2006.

20 Sennett, Richard: The Corrosion of Character: ThePersonal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, NewYork 1998.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/arts/music/south-by-southwest-festival-starts-to-feel-corporate.html



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/arts/music/selling-stars-brands-and-baby-bands.html?pagewanted=all



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a freestanding concept and not directly by RedBull, and attention is directed towards animmersive emotional experience in a controlledcustom-built brand space that creates a certainseparation from broader interests in the culture.When musicians participate in RBMA, they tacitlyagree to a social contract of ignoring the widercollective and long-term consequences for music aspublic culture. From this perspective, it ispossible to understand the limitations of existingconversations about RBMA because they all revolvearound responses to experiences and events. Musicjournalists frequently exercise what I call the“conversion narrative.” The journalist arriveswith reservations about conventional advertisingculture but is overwhelmed by the artistic andcreative focus of the event. Emma Warren, who usedto write for The Guardian and major musicmagazines and served for several years as aninterviewer at RBMA, recalls:

»I spent the first couple of days walking around going›Where’s the catch?‹ Then I had to accept that it wasn’tterrible. Once I realized it was excellent, I was fullyinvolved. … The New York Times podcast basically had thejournalists going, ›I feel like I shouldn’t like it, butI do.‹ It was exactly the journalist’s appraisal of itwhere you go ›This should be terrible. I’m cynical aboutit, but it’s really good. It is good!‹«21

This path from initial skepticism to immersion,fascination, and loyalty is common among myinformants. It suggests that the emotionalexperience has tremendous power in shapingattitudes to RBMA. The emotional atmosphere,21 Emma Warren, conversation with author, 7

March 2014.


however, is embedded in the strategicallyconfigured agenda for the event and its agencywithin networks and media spheres. Theconfiguration happens through the curatorial anddramaturgical arrangement of people andorganizations.

A Closer Look at the Annual Event for Musicians

Analyzing the particular configuration of theannual RBMA musician-event helps explain morespecifically its strategy and its implications forthe culture. My analysis of the event drawsinspiration from the idea that agency inperformance is structured by a collective agenda,an idea originating in 20th-century ritual theoryand with a distinct formulation in the behavioralsociology of Erving Goffman. His influentialthinking about situation-specific behavior androles focused on the micro-level.22 But the agendaof situations within a cultural event such as RBMAinvolves a broader web of agents and media spheresthan many everyday micro-situations such as goingto the dentist or a family dinner. Goffman’sconcept of agenda can be expanded to include morelevels of analysis to examine complex forms ofcultural and corporate agency. A cultural event,moreover, is unique from the perspective ofstrategic communications such as corporatesponsorship in that it not only communicatesmessages or meanings but also involves the bodilyand spatial articulation of emotions and symbolicbehaviors.22 Goffman, Erving: The Presentation of Self in Everyday

Life, New York 1959.

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Agenda and Strategy

Contemporary sponsorship commonly involves thecreation of a symbolic agenda for the corporationin the cultural arena in order for it to have ameaningful role and be able to co-opt desiredmeanings into the brand. The corporation istypically presented as a benefactor and a partnerthat helps the culture reach goals that would nototherwise have been possible.23 The trick ofcultural sponsorship is thus that the corporationexpresses itself through culture. Morespecifically, cultural professionals perform thecorporation’s agenda through their existingidentity in the culture. Compared withadvertising, sponsorship does not involve theproduction of a separate message that can then beexposed in various media. The individual culturalactivity and the cultural persona is the medium.This is why communication scholars have foundsponsorship to be a particular instance ofMarshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is themessage.

When competition for mainstream sportsponsorships intensified in the 1990s, Red Bullpositioned itself as an alternative to Coca-Colaand other mainstream brands by developingplatforms around small and independent networks insports with a proximity to the street and with anunderground community identity. Red Bull played a23 Garzone, Guiliana: »Multiple Sponsorships

and Advertising in the Discursive Constructionof Corporate Identity.« In: Discourse, Identities andGenres in Corporate Communication, 51-74, Bern andelsewhere 2010.


role in creating extreme sport genres.24 The focuswas not only on sports but also on the social andemotional aspects of these underground communitiesas well as on the excitement and the energy ofthese events. Viewed simply from the eventperspective, Red Bull has a history of using thecultural event as fascination culture, from itsearly engagement in extreme sports to RBMA toFelix Baumgartner’s famous jump from almost 40kilometers above the ground in New Mexico in2012.25

Many Ameri was one of the three people atYadastar who developed RBMA and one of the two whostill manage the project sixteen years later. WhenI interviewed him in 2014, he offered the mostinteresting and masterful insights into RBMA Ihave encountered. Rather than reproducing a fixednarrative or responding mechanically, he wasclearly the engineer of ideas. He had a remarkableability to develop the core idea at differentlevels and make it meaningful for diversestakeholders in multiple local contexts. Ameri wasable to systematically explain the motivations andideas behind the many activities, emphasizing the

24 Gorse, Samantha, Simon Chadwick, and Nicholas Burton: „Entrepreneurship Through Sports Marketing: A Case Study of Red Bull in Sport«, Journal of Sponsorship 3 (4), August 2010, 348-357.

25 Tierney, John: „24 Miles, 4 Minutes and 834 M.P.H., All in One Jump.“ The New York Times, 14 October 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/us/felix-baumgartner-skydiving.html?_r=0 (accessed 28 November 2014).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/us/felix-baumgartner-skydiving.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/us/felix-baumgartner-skydiving.html?_r=0

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creation of infrastructure for supporting creativecollaborations and artistic inspiration.

Ameri started promoting nightclub events in hislate teens and went on to work for advertisingagencies. There, he saw the limitations in howcorporations were targeting youth subcultures,primarily by lacking knowledge and commitment tocreate a mutually beneficial relationship, whichis necessary for seizing the unique potentials ofculture in the long term:

»I started working for an agency in Munich that used torepresent Adidas, Lewis, Swatch, and all of these coolerbrands in the 1990s. This whole trend marketing wasstrongly tied to my work at the time, but I saw how alot of these brands were not doing their homework. Theyexploited these scenes. I came from a school of wantingto change that. Therefore, Torsten [Schmidt] and I and awhole bunch of other editors of music magazines weresitting around the table, trying to develop the conceptfor the Academy that would be bulletproof, so to speak.That was like making the biggest enemies part of thegroup to ensure the highest quality standards of thefoundations of the Academy.«26

Tastemakers in the culture have been involved atthe content level from the beginning by co-curating the events and producing various forms ofmedia content. The involvement of editors atleading magazines in the selection of participantsensures high standards and a positive mediaresponse to the announcement of participants. Italso means that influential insiders of theculture become stakeholders and drivers of theproject, acting as the medium for the sponsor and26 Many Ameri, interview with author, 11

March 2014.


taking the brand into the heart of the culture—creating gateways to festivals and clubs. Yet, thecorporation has ownership via the name and itsmedia channels, and it also acquires theexploitation rights. The name is very important,as suggested by the long history of sponsor-namedarenas, concert halls, and sport teams. Even afine arts institution such as Lincoln Center inNew York recently succeeded in long-term effortsto buy out the family with naming rights to AveryFisher Hall for $15 million, with the prospectthat a new sponsor name can finance a $500million-plus renovation plan.27

Event Genre and Participant Roles

The annual two-week event for musicians builds onexisting event genres such as talent workshops,competitions, and festivals. Just as thecelebration and discovery of talent in popularsong with mass appeal found a platform in thetelevision spectacle of Eurovision, and just asindie rock found a platform in showcase festivalsin urban rock clubs, RBMA created a global eventfor artistically ambitious electronic dance music.RBMA has adopted elements of conventional talentevents in the selection of participants, theirperformance of original material, and thecelebration of talent. However, the event is not a27 Pogrebin, Robin: „Lincoln Center to Rename Avery Fisher Hall«, The New York Times, 13 November2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/music/lincoln-center-to-rename-avery-fisher-hall.html?_r=0 (accessed 17 November 2014).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/music/lincoln-center-to-rename-avery-fisher-hall.html?_r=0



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competition, and the participants are notperforming individually but together with otherparticipants in the spirit of peer collaboration.In fact, many RBMA events present collaborationsdeveloped specifically for the occasion. Thecollaborations contextualize artists thatrepresent particular networks or scenes to makethe event unique and interesting, but alsoindirectly positioning the sponsor as a benefactorand catalyst for the art form. Says Ameri:

»If you look at how artists are supported and the peoplewe are working with and their artistic visions, it’s always based on projects that create collaborations and challenge musicians to create something new.«28

Unlike Eurovision, X Factor, or other talentevents, there is no winner and no prize offered toRBMA participants. The main rewards are theexperience, the symbolic recognition that comesfrom being selected, and the cultural and economiccapital that can be gained by becoming part of atrusted global network. A small number of the 60annual participants become part of relativelyclose-knit circles around the event and been hiredto perform on Red Bull’s festival stages and clubevents around the world. Some of them also returnto the annual event as studio sessionfacilitators, as Robin Hannibal and João Barbosa(a.k.a. Branko) have.

In terms of space and media, the event is stagedin global cities such as New York, London, andTokyo to create an aura of cosmopolitan cool. Themain media platform is not broadcast television28 Many Ameri, interview with author, 11 March

2014.


(as in Eurovision) or the music press (as in indierock), but an in-house media production team thatfeeds the event’s own online channels and a dailymagazine distributed for free around the hostcity. By organizing a strong media team and amedia platform for the event with premium andexclusive content, the organization becomes aprimary source vis-à-vis the music press andcreates one central media space for the globalaudience. The media production happens on locationat the event. The managers and editors are fromthe mainstream music industry, but they commissioncontent from insiders of the local scene on afreelance basis.

The activities and choreography in the eventspace evolve around two key roles. One is thetalented young musician, typically a male producerwith the privilege of embodying the culture’svitality. He creates new and original music thatdoes not fit into established genre categories.The music, moreover, exhibits enough (sub)culturalcapital to disinterest the mainstream media. Theother role is the (usually older) male artist whomight not be a star but is widely recognized as apioneer in his field.

The rituals designed for the young talent arethe lecture and the music-making activities. Theformer happens in a plenary room, while the latterhappens in one of the handful of adjacentrecording studios in the event’s building. Therole of the great artist is to lecture, whichhappens in the form of an hour-long interview inan informal, living-room like setting of a couchwith a small table in front. The interview isabout the person’s pioneering contributions with afocus on big ideas, achievements, andcollaborations with other great artists.

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The typical day at the event goes like this:participants attend an hour-long interview withthe great artist in the morning and again in theafternoon, if they are not engaging in a studiosession. In the evening, they go to concertsaround the city (free for participants), andlater, some gather for late-night studio sessions.

Participant Selection: Individuals and Scenes

Being cast in the role of a promisinginternational talent, collaborating with othertalents, and meeting pioneers in the field whileattending extraordinary concerts and beingprovided with comfortable accommodation in ahotel, all for free, appeals to many aspiringyoung artists. Five thousand apply every year fromover 90 countries. But how are participantsselected, and how does the selection process shapetheir agency?

Applicants are required to fill out a 17-pageapplication form. The form reveals that taste andpersonality are key criteria.29 Applicants arerequested to submit a CD with the applicant’s ownmusic and respond to a few questions about theirmusical activities, including whether theyidentify as a producer, DJ, instrumentalist,and/or vocalist. My experienced informants saythat most participants are producers. However,cultural capital and taste are explored from manyangles in the application, including questionsabout the applicant’s inspirations, influences,record collection, current top ten and all-timefavorite albums, and the records the applicantwould play at a party, the after-party, and at adinner for one’s in-laws. Another slightly


personal question is, »Which records make youcry?« Moreover, the applicant is asked aboutsuggestions for artists that he or she would liketo have as lecturers at the Academy. The applicantis also asked about interests in food, books, andmovies and more personal questions about bigmoments in the person’s life, the things that aremost important in life, and the applicant’s topthree online destinations. In short, theapplication highlights elements of lifestyle andpersonality, and some of the most importantcriteria, based on my interviews and observations,include references to a broad musical taste.Successful applications must always exhibit someknowledge of electronic dance music, a positiveand open attitude, a creative and collaborativemind, and a general sense of what is cool andtrendy in international urban youth culture. Theform indicates that the organizers understand themusicians and creates the sense that the Academyis smart and creative. The musicians I interviewedsaid the questions were interesting and that theoverall experience of filling out the form wasmeaningful.29 »Red Bull Music Academy Tokyo 2014«, Red

Bull Music Academy,http://apply.redbullmusicacademy.com/ (accessed15 November 2014). A demographic analysis isbeyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice itto say that it reflects the evolution of theproject’s cultural geography from Western Europeto the Euro-American centers for electronicdance music and their offshoots in other bigcities around the world. The majority ofparticipants are white men in the 20s but theselection reflects attention to gender andracial balance.

http://apply.redbullmusicacademy.com/

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The applicant’s social capital is importantbecause the participants function as drivers andmultipliers of the RBMA institution. Whereas amusic conservatory or a music competition can beexpected to primarily evaluate artistic skills andperhaps looks, RBMA greatly emphasizes culturalcapital, social skills, and social networkcapital. The application form will revealinformation about these aspects of capital, andthe evaluation committee can obtain additionalinformation from local Red Bull offices about theapplicant’s career and reputation. Ameriemphasizes the social network focus:

»There are certain scenes that will find themselves veryconnected to us because many of their heroes havesomehow come through the Academy, or we were just therewhen these scenes were sprawling, and we supported thema lot. This will be different if you look at it from aUK perspective: there’s the dubstep scene. If you lookat the US, you might look at the whole beats scene. Ifyou look at South Africa, we really helped coin orsupport a unique South African deep house scene. Soevery country will have a different kind of connectionwith us, but hopefully as someone who was there whenthey were growing and not so interesting to everybodyand quality prevailed. Take New Zealand. Every countrywill have a different relation with us. Fat Freddy Dropand this whole South Pacific soul kind of scene, theywould feel very connected with us. In Portugal, thiswhole Lusophone scene and Buraka Som Sistema… If youthink how many faces this has, that’s what a globalproject does, I think.«30

30 Many Ameri, interview with author, 11 March2014.


»Psst, We Don’t Like the EDM Tag«

The genre configuration of RBMA is important toits dynamics. The organizers do not apply genrelabels in order to cultivate an attitude ofopenness and excitement about exploring unknownterritory. RBMA is grounded in electronic dancemusic culture and its nightclub and festivalnetworks, primarily the parts of the culture withunderground and cosmopolitan values. One of myparticipant informants said that the participantshad talked over and over about the kinds of musicthey were making and ended up agreeing that it is»basically EDM« (electronic dance music).31 When Iused the term EDM in one conversation with Warren,however, she kindly said, »Psst, we don’t like theEDM tag«.32 This contrast reflects the typicalomnivore logic of pluralism and non-labeling inthe culture. It also reflects the deliberatedistancing from the mass culture that the word EDMhas come to represent in recent years, as it hasbecome a popular industry label. Only in thebackstage discourse among employees can one findwillingness to define the boundaries. One exampleis an interview with the production manager of2013 RBMA in New York with the music industrymagazine Billboard:

Interviewer: »How would you describe the booking forthis, were there certain kinds of music mandated fromabove?«Adam Shore: »The Academy is rooted in all types of dancemusic, every facet of hip-hop, reggae and dub and soul

31 August Rosenbaum, conversation with author,10 January 2014.

32 Emma Warren, conversation with author, 7March 2014.

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and more, while always exploring the unexplored areaswithin those. But this year there seemed to be adetermination to expand deeper into noise, drone,minimalism and experimental music. But the focus ondance music is primary as a majority of the participantsmake music for clubs. Still, the music they make and themusic we champion, can almost be seen as the opposite ofEDM. We go very deep into disco, house, techno, globalsounds and all types of abstract dance floor directions,but we are happy to leave the corny, cartoony, overblownworld of EDM and pop progressive house to others.«33

While RBMA focuses on cutting-edge house andtechno, it also draws on other urban musicalcultures such as experimental jazz and noise musicthat aspire to a concert experience rather than toa dance floor experience. The adoption of musicalforms known for their high artistic aspirationsand lack of willingness to compromise artisticfreedom is a result of the autonomy granted topeople with artistic interests. Autonomy at thecontent level helps sustains the project’svitality and legitimacy in the culture. Whenartists such as Brian Eno and Ryuichi Sakamotoparticipate in hour-long interviews about theirart, it becomes hard to ignore the RBMAinstitution and criticize it for being just acommercial venture. What these artists do at theannual event and elsewhere has little immediate33 Gensler, Andy: »Red Bull Academy’s Adam

Share: The Man Who Helped Bring Giorgio Moroder,Brian Eno and 234 Other Musicians to NYC«, in:Billboard.com (29 May 2013),http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1563856/red-bull-music-academys-adam-shore-the-man-who-helped-bring (accessed 15 October 2014).


commercial value. There is a genuine interest insmall and experimental genres among stakeholders,but these forms of music also serve the functionof generating cultural capital. This arrangementseems like a win-win situation, but only as longas we ignore the wider cultural and historicalcontexts. The artists are not only investing theirown persona in the brand, but they are alsorepresenting the culture. They transfer ownershipof their culture and bring it into a new context.These cultures have existed in basements and loftsof gritty urban environments and held anti-corporate views for decades. Now they are enteringa controlled and stylish brand space through theparticipation of its aging icons (see Table 1 atthe end of this chapter with regard to basic factsabout the main annual Red Bull Music Academyevent).

Implications for Research and Policy

The expansion of sponsorship into cultural sphereswith high artistic aspirations helps the elites ofthese spheres grow a new source of revenue andreach wider audiences. However, the artists arealso entering a world shaped by more sophisticatedmarketing strategies for channeling cultural powerinto commerce. The artists are representingthemselves and bringing the culture with them intothis process. As they become integrated withmainstream business and society, music scenes suchas European free jazz, indie rock in Chicago, andother musical cultures become less sensitive tocorporate ownership. They are no longer anti-corporate. They collaborate with the advertisingbusiness. A core aspect of the transformation is

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the focus on individual events and careers at theexpense of broader collective interests and theethical dimensions of the culture. The focus onthe individual situation involves a separationfrom the broader culture. Sponsorship, moreover,privileges the »shiny people« of the culture, touse Brötzmann’s phrase in the above quotation.Corporations single out those in the culture withthe most cultural capital and relevance to thebrand.

Another striking implication is that artists insmall-scale culture markets are marked by a newself-censorship. The artists’ growing dependencyon sponsorship means that they must be carefulabout what they say regarding sponsorship andpolitics. Several of my musician informants werereluctant or uncomfortable speaking on thesubject; some declined, and most wanted to beanonymous. This self-censorship shows that whilethe event may be short, the cultural and politicalimplications are not. A few of the DJs andmusicians with strong ties to the moreartistically challenging and experimental musicalforms also wanted to erase their association withRBMA and from sponsorship:

»I'm trying to minimize my RBMA footprint as it were,because I have noticed that many of the better-knownpast participants end up with the »RBMA alum« tag forthe rest of their careers…. I feel that I have doneother things that I would rather be known for thantaking part in a two-week music camp funded by a softdrink company, even though I had a great time while Iwas there. Who didn't? So, while I'll play theoccasional RBMA event if it’s in a city or festival thatI would otherwise have no route into whatsoever (and thefee reflects the corporate sponsorship), I am generally


cautious about anything that would strengthen theassociation, and I certainly would not want to comeacross as some kind of ambassador.‹‹34

The broader implication is an altered balancebetween public and private ownership in thecultural landscape. When sponsorship becomes vitalto the income of artists in a cultural sphere, itstimulates the evolution of the genre as aprofessional culture but not as a public culture.

The question of balance between private andpublic culture has received little attention inscholarship on sponsorship. Marketing research hashistorically been dominated by technocraticinterests in advertising, while cultural research,on the other hand, has been dominated by themainstream humanities tradition for analyzingmeaning and experience separately from theunderlying corporate structures and forms ofproduction.

The business and cultural studies literature oncultural sponsorship have both followed a path ofspecialization in different directions. In part,the situation reflects different interests in thebusiness and cultural world.

A broad introduction to cultural sponsorshipwritten by professors at the business school inOslo, Norway, illustrates the disciplinary gap. Itoffers a useful overview of the existing marketingliterature on the topic, introducing coredefinitions, market figures, and strategies, andthe book is based on experience in managingcultural sponsorships at a local agency.

34 Anonymous DJ/musician informant, former participant in RBMA, interview with author, 31 January 2014.

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Influenced by narratives in the arts field in acountry with a high level of arts funding, theauthors go further than most marketing scholars inaddressing cultural policy. In the introduction,they briefly summarize some of the commoncritiques of capitalism and the culture industry,but they quickly dismiss those critiques:

»The perception of capitalism’s hegemony and itscolonization of all areas of society is the main reasonso many intellectuals and artists have been so negativeof both the commercialization of the arts field and astronger bond relation between culture and business. Ifone adopts this perspective, it is impossible to avoid anegative judgment of cultural sponsorship. Art isdestined to lose—its freedom, its uniqueness, and itsraison d’être. It is our opinion that this perspectivetends to become totalitarian in that it condemns allphenomena from very general theories about society andart, and it gives little or no space for localdifferences or nuances based on experiences at anotherlevel than the theory itself. The point is not whetherthe perspective is wrong or right but that it is oneamong others, and we find that it is problematic toapply to cultural sponsorship today.«35

The book is aimed at a broad readership, includingpractitioners, so it makes sense for the authorsto adopt a common-sense perspective and offerpractical suggestions for navigating the politicsof the field without analyzing the implicationsfor theory and discipline. The authors go on tosuggest useful balanced views that recognize powerasymmetry between the corporate world and the35 Gran, Anne-Brit/Hofplass Sophie:

Kultursponsing, Oslo 2007, 26–27. Author’stranslation.


cultural world, but they also suggest that the twoworlds have a mutual interest in collaborating,which is certainly true for cultural professionalsbut not necessarily for the cultural publicsphere. Yet, readers should look elsewhere for adiscussion of the conceptual implications of theseviews. One way forward is to engage more deeplywith the literature that the authors are quick todismiss. Economics and sociology have developedconcepts and theories, not just skeptical meta-narratives of capitalism.

Galbraith’s Theory of Social BalanceThe changing relation between public and privatein cultural life can draw usefully from the longhistory of thinking about the relation betweeneconomy and society. John Maynard Keynes, AdamSmith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and many otherinfluential economists have offered perspectiveson the relation between public and privateinstitutions, between the public domain and themarket domain. Of particular relevance to thestudy of expanding private enterprise in consumerculture society is the work of John KennethGalbraith, a Harvard professor who specialized ininstitutional economics from a liberalperspective. He was active in the Democratic Partyand served in the administrations of four Americanpresidents (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman,Kennedy, and Johnson).

Galbraith proposed a theory of social balancebetween private and public in his 1958 book TheAffluent Society. The book is a critical history ofeconomics and specifically of core problems ofcapitalism. The book pioneered the idea thatproduction in the modern economic system depends

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on the creation of demand by producers. Thisresults in a culture that ascribes great socialvalue to consumption. Galbraith thus anticipatedideas about the consumer society and the role ofmarketing communications in shaping social lifeand the social imagination. An importanthistorical context had to do with the role of thestate and class formations. Writing in theaftermath of World War II, Galbraith witnessed howthe state contributed to a growing affluent class,which, ironically, contributed to the decline ofthe state, as the newly affluent classes adoptedconventional attitudes of the affluent classes. Inhis view, this process ultimately led to the freemarket ideologies of Thatcher and Reagan.

Galbraith’s chapter on social balance beginswith a critique of how the consumption of privateproducts such as cars and electronics isresponsible for the decline of public services inNew York City. The public spaces, he says, aredirty and badly maintained. Parks and playgroundsare insufficient.36 Galbraith further drawsattention to the damaging impacts of privateconsumption on the environment, a public domain.Although the urban environment has developedconsiderably since the 1950s, the basic dynamicshave not changed. Cities have grown commerciallyat the cost of becoming more exclusive commercialspheres in society with less room for the poor inthe city. Galbraith’s analysis of the implicationsfor the environmental can now be framed at theglobal level of climate change, which evolves as aproduct of the modern economic system at the costof a global public survival.36 Galbraith, John Kenneth: The Affluent Society.

Fourth Edition with a New Introduction. New York 41984[1958], 191.


Galbraith argues that state regulation isimportant to maintain social balance because therelation between private and public is caught inunequal dynamics. He offers three characteristicsof the dynamics, namely, the dependency effect ofconsumption, the truce on inequality, and thetendency to inflation. The first characteristic isthe most relevant to the argument of this chapter:

»The conventional wisdom holds that the community, largeor small, makes a decision as to how much it will devoteto its public services. This decision is arrived at bydemocratic process.… It will be obvious, however, thatthis view depends on the notion of independentlydetermined consumer wants. … But given the dependenceeffect—given that consumer wants are created by theprocess by which they are satisfied—the consumer makesno such choice. He is subject to the forces ofadvertising and emulation by which production createsits own demand.… Since management of demand andemulative effects operate on behalf of privateproduction, public services will have an inherenttendency to lag behind.«37

These dynamics help explain the growing power ofthe private sector in the global economy and inconventional areas of the public sector,particularly as public education and public mediahave been transformed by neoliberal policies toact more in the interests of private corporationsand to act like private corporations. Galbraithsuggests that the public sector has a tendency tolag behind in areas where the private sector hasan interest, be it science or culture; this idearaises the question about whether the recentevolution in cultural sponsorship is a particular37 Ibid., 198.

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instance of private domination, especially assponsors explore new cultural forms and flowsbeyond the national frameworks of culturalinstitutions supported by European nation-states.As cultural sponsorship has grown since the 1990s,public media in Western Europe has cut budgets forart forms with small audiences. In some cases,longstanding jazz and classical music orchestrashave been terminated, and considerable budgetshave been allocated to popular culture programmingand big events. In light of this reallocation, itis a sign of crisis in conventional concepts ofpublic culture when small and experimentalcultures migrate to advertising and promotionalculture. Ameri says that people at the BritishArts Council, BBC, the Goethe Institute, and othermajor cultural institutions responded withexcitement to the evolution of RBMA:

»We had longer conversations with those differentorganizations about how the fact that we were funded bya private company allowed us to program way more purerand without any commercial constraints and basicallymuch freer.«38

Because the primary purpose of sponsorship is tocreate emotional connections with a brand in along-term perspective, not all projects areexpected to generate short-term sales. The long-term perspective creates a degree of commercialfreedom. However, history is full of examples ofpublic institutions playing a key role intechnological innovations, for instance, preciselybecause the public sector does not depend onshort-term profits and can afford particular kinds38 Many Ameri, interview with author, 11 March

2014.


of autonomy. In the cultural sector, however, thestate is not primarily enlisted as a catalyst forinnovation, at least within the 20th-centurywelfare-state models from which culturalsubsidizing has evolved. Most of my informantsagreed that state institutions could havedeveloped something similar to RBMA, but statefunding of music that is not classical music hashistorically been very small. The upshot is that,in many cases, musical culture is left to marketconditions. In a European cultural policyperspective, the movement of sensitive culturalspheres toward sponsorship might be seen as yetanother example in the long history of failures tosupport music outside of the Austro-Germanic artmusic canon.

My research on RBMA suggests the emergence of anew and rather fundamental crisis in the publicsector’s role in this area of the culturallandscape, namely that informants generally do notsee the public sector as a distinct and necessaryalternative to the market. An artist who hasworked with RBMA for seven consecutive years andreceived at least one $40,000-plus grant from anational arts council said that he really did notsee the difference between getting money from thestate or from a corporate sponsor. Even within thecultural institutions that Ameri mentions above,the concept of public culture has weakened, sincepeople in positions of responsibility there wouldhave liked to do what Red Bull has done in musicalculture.39

ConclusionThe research presented in this chapter evolvedfrom a curiosity about the ambitious artistic

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profile of the Red Bull Music Academy and itsgrowing presence in the music world. I had no ideahow big the Red Bull institution had become, andit took a while to understand how it works. Likeanyone who has participated in worlds ofprofessional live events with electronic musicover the past ten years, I had been exposed to thebrand, but I was skeptical of brand culture anddid not understand why someone like Brian Eno andsome of my humanist scholar acquaintances, forinstance, would want to contribute their culturalcapital to such a thing. As I started researchingthe media archives of RBMA, I was struck by theartistic focus and depth and was inspired byconversations with scholar friends. I initiallyplayed with the idea that RBMA might be a kind ofarts foundation. The artistic quality and focusand the genuine engagement with music turned outto be true, but as the research became situated inthe history of sponsorship, which necessarilyincluded more analysis of the discourse and powerrelations, the picture became more nuanced. It isclear that RBMA is one of the pioneers of a newsponsorship paradigm that has succeeded in gaininglong-term sympathy in the music world, but it isalso surprising how little critical distance thereis to RBMA’s narrative. Music journalism haslargely paid lip service to and continues to writeabout RBMA at the level of individual eventexperiences, failing to see it as a culture-39 For a discussion of the neoliberal policy in public broadcasting corporations in the Nordic countries, see Holt, Fabian: »Introduction: Music in a Globalizing Region.« In: Popular Music in the Nordic Countries, ed. by Fabian Holt and Antti-Ville Kärjä (forthcoming).


producing brand sphere with a global networkstrategy. Part of the research was thus to offer amore analytical language for discussing theactivities and narratives of RBMA. To this end, itproved useful to trace the changing attitudestoward sponsorship in different musiciancommunities, to draw from the communicationstudies literature on sponsorship in corporatecommunication, and to adopt a sociologicalapproach for analyzing the changing relationshipsand structures, particularly by exploring thesponsor’s and the participants’ motivations andhow power is produced around these networkedcultural events.

This combination of analytical perspectives—specialist cultural research, marketingcommunications, and sociology—will have relevancefor future studies of cultural sponsorship as itbecomes more recognized as an interdisciplinarytopic. Cultural sponsorship is of relevance forall these areas of study because it has evolved asa cultural technology that brings abouttransformations in both the cultural world and thebusiness world. The interdisciplinary turn forwhich I am arguing will help create a betterunderstanding of cultural sponsorship, as well asof taking the situation in sensitive culturalspheres more seriously and their potential futuresas public culture. There is a lack of nuance inthe sponsorship literature when it comes toexploring narratives within the cultural world.This lack of nuance was also suggested in mycritique of compartmentalization within marketingcommunications and cultural research earlier inthe chapter. For marketing scholars and thebusiness world, there is much to learn from RedBull’s music venture because few, if any sponsors,

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have been able to establish similar long-termbrand culture spheres beyond mainstream popculture. For cultural research, the lesson is thatsponsorship is an issue not only for thosestudying popular culture but also for thosestudying cultures with an orientation towards somekind of arts sphere. Those cultures now routinelycollaborate with corporations. It is striking howresistant specialist research on cultural formssuch as music has been to understanding marketingas an integral force in cultural life. Thischapter suggests that cultural sponsorship is aforce that shapes aesthetics, genre boundaries,transnational cultural flows, and narratives ofhistory. Brands are channeling ideas andactivities in creative networks partially owned bycorporations, altering the balance between cultureas private and public phenomena. The chapter hasoffered an historically and sociologicallygrounded analysis of RBMA. The analysis points toa broader change in cultural consciousness insensitive cultural spheres and to broaderimplications of sponsorship for contemporaryculture and how it should be analyzed.


Table 1: Basic facts about the main annual Red Bull Music Academy eventHost cities Berlin, Dublin, London, São Paulo, Cape Town, Rome, Seattle, Melbourne, Toronto, Barcelona, Madrid, New York, and Tokyo

OrganizationTwo general managers based in BerlinA production team led by an experienced music industry professionalA team of about 100 employees, of which 25 are from the global teamDaily newspaper produced by 10 employees and a number of freelancing insiders, including artists and music scholars

ParticipantsA total of 900 participants by 2014 (called »alumni«by the organization)Two classes of thirty musicians for two weeks each, one class at a time

LecturersA total of about 50 lecturers by 2014Lecturers associated with electronic dance music andother popular genres include Flying Lotus, Questlove, Erykah Badu, Branko, Benji B, Frankie Knuckles, Ritchie HawtinLecturers associated with avant-garde, jazz, and/or experimental genres include Brian Eno, Stephen O’Malley, Prurient, Alan Licht, Joe Lovano, Herbie Hancock, Ryuichi Sakamoto

ActivitiesStudio sessions and lecturesConcerts in the city, including the concept events »Culture clash,« »Drone activity night,« and »Hardcore activity in progress«

Activities across the yearA total of 250 workshops and 650 concerts, club

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Notes

The Evolution of Corporate Sponsorship in Sensitive Cultural Spheres (2015)

Documents

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