Strategies for facilitating music collaboration online

Online collaboration between musicians in 2020 is a rapidly developing practice due to a range of environmental, epidemiological and creative motivations. The technical facility to collaborate in a variety of different formats exists via file-sharing services, video conferencing suites and specialist services such as Splice and Auddly. Yet, given this proliferation of technologies, little attention has been paid into how creatives can most meaningfully utilize these new collaborative opportunities within their working practice. In this article, we wish to share some early research findings about online music collaboration gained through our experience of facilitating three online songwriting camps with students from Leeds College of Music in the United Kingdom and Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Denmark. This article will consider the importance of managing roles, the impact of communication tools and the requirement for time management when collaborating online before proposing a set of guidelines to enable productive online creative collaboration.