Songwriting Camps: Geschichte, Theorien und Forschungsansätze zur Fließband-Produktion von populärer Musik

This chapter examines songwriting camps, a contemporary form of collaborative music production spaces convened by music publishers, record labels, aggregators or collecting societies. Differently qualified creative professionals come together in these camps to write songs in a division of labour in an assembly line fashion. Based on a literature review, the article provides historical insights and attempts to highlight developments. This chapter discusses key issues around collaborative songwriting in order to evaluate how recent songwriting camps fit into popular music songwriting practices since the early twentieth century. The songwriting profession is characterised by opposites, just like its recent manifestation in camps: Songwriting is fundamentally creative and liberating, but also formulaic and bound by various musical, creative, social, organisational and legal constraints. Commercial songwriting can be personal, expressive and authentic, but usually takes place within structures that are primarily geared to-wards commercial exploitation and success. Songwriting camps are the most recent manifestation of assembly-line production of popular music and perhaps represent the culmination of these frictions.