Pedagogy

At a time when globalization has become the centre stage in dictating the consumerism and lifestyle patterns, music industries have turned into key cultural industries as they are involved in various social-economic aspects of the society at all levels.   Particularly, the industries have become a key defining element of peoples way of life through creativity that either directly involves them in the production and supply chain.  David (2007, p. 43) explains that the creativity inculcated in the popular music industries acts not only as a guideline to peoples way of living but are also used as reference points in addressing various issues in their lives.  This paper evaluates implications of the popular music industry while generating the holistic understanding of their creation and production process in relation to contracting. 
A brief analysis of the music industries
    The development of music industries has over the years evolved into a high profile niche between the artists, the music labels and market.  William et al (2007, pp. 51-52) explain that music production took a highly fragmented outlook after the invention of sound recording early in the 20th century.  However, the second half of 20th century saw major changes in the music industry through harmonization of the production process.   Following the strong influence that music exerts in the society, the music industry remains one of the most profitable businesses in the society.  Army (2010, pp. 102-103) argues that owing to this outlook, the music industries have increasingly centred on major recording labels which are currently defining the industries.  Technological development has further elevated the industries as global communities become key stakeholders in the chain process.  Therefore, as Hutchison (2010a, p. 405-408) pointed out, the music industries will continue growing in the 21st century in that they not only reflect the peoples culture, but holistically take part in defining it. 
The role of a recording label
    Recording labels are companies associated with music recording that have emerged in the 20th century and manage key brands as well as trademarks used in the music industry.  Music labels, as Hutchison (2010b, p. 351) indicates, form the heart of the music industry in the 21st century.   Hutchison (2010b, p. 355) further emphasizes that while facilitating the production, promotion and marketing of music, the labels use key contracts with various artists as the main route path for production.  In these contracts, the music labels have the following obligations.
Pay for the recording of a series of recording in the form of a recoupable advance
      Over the years, the music production has remained a major issue to artists due to myriad of logistics involved in the system.  Music labels have therefore formed an important facilitating element in setting the stage for artists with the correct environment for production.   Alistair and Nancy (2008, p. 1650) explain that an upfront fee is provided by the label companies to the artists for covering  all expenses involved in recording, production, mixing as well as mastering the record.  Notably, this payment is negotiable between the artist and the music label based on the set standards, the artists history, and general market speculation.   Furthermore, the recording contracts between the artists and music labels indicates that the recoupable expenses must be recovered by the label companies before the artists can start receiving the necessary sales royalties from their music sales (David, 2007, p. 56-57).  Though this is negotiable between the recording companies and specific music labels, it has remained a highly contended issue.
Provide for the mastering, remixing, arranging, production and post-production of the album
Army (2010, pp. 104-106) argues that success in any business enterprise is based on the ability to produce high quality products that can generate high profits amidst the prevailing competition in the market.  At this point, the music labels become very critical in facilitating the technical procedures and processes for an album production.  As indicated earlier, artists are usually ill equipped to holistically complete the recording process.   Music labels provide the mastering required for an album to suit the needed objectivity for the artist.  Snowman (2009, pp. 431-435) explains that mastering is seen as a very critical element towards suiting the target market by adding the needed aural enhancements and creating the necessary coherence in a song or album.  Through mastering a particular album, the music label inculcates the peoples orientation to generate acceptance and identity in the society. 
Remixing, arranging, production, and post production procedures further facilitate the musicians ability to concentrate on key components towards improving the overall quality.  As a result, the needed professional input is factored in the production process while generating an expanded outlook for them. William et al (2007, p. 74) argue that owing to their long term experience, the music labels are indeed in a better position to guide the whole process and make near perfect predictions of the market expectations.  Professionally, music labels approach this process with a business viewpoint a consideration largely accredited to their great commitment towards higher quality production which ultimately result to higher returns.   While the production process is critical in preparing the final product, it is the post production procedures that dictate the actual market performance in the market.  Therefore, the labels promise to further facilitate albums promotion in the market (Army, 2010, pp. 98-99).  With globalization fast changing the face of promotion in the market, most labels have equally adopted electronic marketing of different music products in the market.
Protecting music products for different artists
Notably, music labels as Snowman (2009, pp. 447-448) explains, are key investments that require effective management and holistic protection from destructive market forces.  Therefore, one of the key issues that labels promise the artists is guarding their music against destructive aspects such as piracy, music sharing, and free downloads in the market.   With intensification of the digital sales, most music products are easily pirated, downloaded for free or even shared online.   As an entity, unlike the artists as individuals, music labels cooperate with the music licensing authorities to address these problems. 
The musical act agreement
Completing the recording of an album by an agreed time
Sheila and Kenn (2009, P. 35) argues that a recording contract between a music label and an artists seeks to provide an effective timeframe for a given album.  Notably, the production process as indicated earlier is a highly complex process and involves a very large number of key stakeholders.  Due to the high costs involved in the whole process, most labels have established effective mechanisms of assessing the actual time required the final song or album to be ready.   Snowman (2009, pp. 440-442) therefore indicates that the agreement is seen by the music labels as an important consideration for reducing its overall costs while providing the best for the artists.  For the artists, completion of an album within the specified period of time is an indication of faster penetration to the market and marketing themselves while increasing their chances of benefiting from royalty sales. 
Work with personnel and in facilities agrees to by the label
As indicated earlier, to effectively complete the production of an album, an artist must have key support from all the relevant staff at all levels of production.   Hutchison (2010a, pp. 412-413) argues that most talented artists often fail to effectively capitalize on their capabilities due to lack of the necessary support.   This has been a major problem especially to new and upcoming musicians.  Therefore, music labels facilitate the artists ability to work with highly qualified personnel throughout the production period.   Indeed, though wording may be done by an artist himself, the personnel have great input towards enhancing its ability of meeting the key objectives at the market (Alistair and Nancy, 2008, pp. 1651-1652). 
As indicated earlier, technological advancements have seen the music industry move a step higher in the 21st century compared to the 19th and 20th century.   As a result, the music labels are able to remain in business due to their ability to maintain the required modern facilities for production.  Army (2010, p. 105) argues that artists are therefore allowed to use music Lecturers Name and Course NumberYou may include here a copy of the question if you think it is necessary. Or simply delete this comment

This is a report on the group work that consists of my reflections on the process of collaborative group working and the approaches the group chose to take. It contains an n overall picture of the group dynamics from the beginning to the end of the project. Personal opinions of the author, and recommendations are also included

 When we first formed our group we thought that we could easily finish the project without any internal friction in the group and we started our project on this positive note. We learned about each other and were formally introduced, however the fact remained that we had never worked with each other in the past and must start from the beginning. After our introduction we started learning about each others personalities. Personally, I am a somewhat shy person and not very outspoken and I learned that the other members had completely different personalities than my own.
After initial introduction, I observed that there was a lot of friction coming into the group as some of the members were more outspoken than others and did not give equal opportunity to others. I also observed that not all members were operating at an equal level, where some members wanted more say than the others. Furthermore, I observed that some members of the group wanted to impose their own suggestions on others without listening to all sides of the story. This I realized was a problem of leadership within the group and needed to be eradicated by clearly communicating that all members were on an equal footing and must contribute equally to the project.
After many initial disagreements, we learned that we must cooperate completely to finish the project on time. That is the time we realized that by arguing with each other we were only wasting our time and not contributing something valuable to the group. By this time I had realized that by being quiet, I was doing myself and the whole group a disfavour, also, the persons who were very imposing within the group had realized by this time that nothing could be achieved by imposing their will on other members and proper consensus must be achieved by discussing each topic objectively.
By this time, we had reached the end of the project and we had to concentrate on our individual tasks as well as finalizing them and incorporating them into the project as a whole. We had neither the time, nor extra effort to waste on arguing with each other at this time. We furiously worked with each other in the end to complete the project and successfully did it in the end.
There were four members in our group. All of us had different skill sets and different approaches to our project work. What we initially agreed upon was the distribution of work according to each persons skills and their interests. However, this did not work out very well initially as there were some members in our group who had a negative outlook about the project from the start. This negativity originated from the fact that each of us had a different approach to the project at hand and we did not succeed in communicating our differences to each other, which is why some group members thought that they were being dragged down by the other members of the group.
The idea of allocating specific tasks to each group member also seemed very good at the beginning, although we later learned that it was not without its disadvantages. Each group member had hisher own task at hand and concerned themselves only with their own task, this resulted in our inability to understand the project as a whole generally and other members tasks specifically. The same resulted in our difficulties to put the whole assignment together in a flowing and coherent project. Our inability to understand each others contributions also resulted in miscommunications and misunderstandings within the group, which we gradually overcame later.
Another issue that we faced initially was the problem of absenteeism. There was a lack of coordination between the group members and many members did not show up for the group meetings, due to which the delegation of tasks was delayed. This resulted in a lot of confusion within the group initially, because without mutual consensus the group was unable to proceed with the tasks, also, the group members did not know how to proceed with their work due to lack of agreement on the subject. This problem had a very lasting impact on the whole group and even till the end, our group had to suffer due to this initial mistake and the work was delayed, which we had to make up for later in the project.
The lack of coordination was evident even outside the university, where we seldom met. That meant that each person was going on with their task without any communication with the other members. Each member had hisher own perception regarding the whole project, the lack of coordination meant the individual perceptions about the projects were different within the group and because each member perceived the project differently, their work was different from what the other members of the group expected. This caused our group to have difficulties in finalizing the project later. Each members contribution had to be tweaked to make the project look cohesive. As such, each member contributed incompatible pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which had to be changed substantially to bring them together, even after doing that, some of the kinks were left in the project work, where we see that different contributions stand out in the whole project.
An annoying thing that we had to face due to our lack of proper coordination was that certain topics were repeated by two members of our group, i.e. due to the fact that one person did not know about the other persons topic, both accidently worked on the same. When this was discovered by the group members, a lot of unpleasantness ensued. The problem was that no member of the group wanted to change the topic after having completed their work and expected the other member to redo the other topic. These disputes increased the work of the whole group and caused a lot of delays. In hindsight, these disputes could have easily been averted by having proper communication between all group members.
Initially I was very reluctant to speak out at the group meetings because I felt intimidated by imposing personalities of our group. This resulted in me being quiet in most of the meetings. However, later into the project, I did become confident and made contributions in group meetings but this too did not go very well because due to my initial timidity, my suggestions were not taken into consideration. This distressed me very much as I felt that I was not making any contribution to the overall projects and I might be unable to implement my suggestions into our project. I talked about this state of affairs with another group member and was surprised to hear that she was facing the same problem. She said that she did not think the other group members were taking her suggestion into account. We both decided to help and support each other in getting our respective points across. By supporting each other, we gave each other courage and confidence in our abilities and this resulted in our communicating more effectively in our group and successfully getting our points across to the other members of the group.
As I stated earlier that some of the group members had very strong personalities, especially our one group member was exceptionally strong minded. This made other group members feel very left out in the beginning, including myself. To communicate anything to such person was extremely difficult, as one could not disagree with them comfortably. I learned throughout the whole project that the best way to communicate a disagreement with such a person was to make herhimself realize that the disagreement in not with hisher personality or individually, the disagreements were in fact professional and highlighted that each of us were different persons with our own specific outlook on things and we must judge the value of our recommendations on their essential merits.
Similarly, I did not ask many questions in the beginning of the project. The result of this was that I did not have the complete grasp of the project at hand and did not understand all the intricacies of my task. I realized that if I did not correct this, I would lag far behind the group and therefore I starting asking questions confidently and clearly in an effort to understand everything completely.
I do not think that I created any other problems in the group other than those I have already mentioned. I noticed that over time, the other members of the group became good listeners and this was one thing that our group lacked from the beginning. With exception of myself, I noticed that the some members were having trouble in actively listening to other members of the group. After noticing this problem, I tried to resolve it by communicating to the group that this is a problem we are specifically facing. When told clearly and frankly, the other members also realized that this was the case and all of us made a conscious effort to listen to each other and try to understand each other.
In hindsight, we can make a few recommendations about how we could have overcome the difficulties that we faced throughout the project. Firstly, we needed to make a cohesive plan at the start of the project and we should have learned what the strengths each individual member were. After establishing this, we should have made a schedule by mutual agreement and should have stuck to that schedule. This would have avoided the inconvenience we faced while doing our work. In addition to that, we should have familiarized ourselves with what the task of the other members were and what were the objectives that we were individually trying to achieve. After establishing our individual objectives, we should have set some objectives for the group as a whole and aligned our personal objectives to those of the group, so that perfect synergy is achieved (Bion, 1961).
Better communications could have been achieved by organizing more informal meetings within the group. In addition to that, in formal group meetings, we could have taken turns to speak in a specified order, so that the whole group listens to everyone in the group.
The conclusions that we reached regarding the project was the importance of young people in urban regeneration. We see that urban societies are regenerating at a rapid rate, and this needs to be related to the crime rate and young people that exist in our society. At the neighbourhood level, initiatives need to be started that make sure that young people are not left behind in the urban regeneration, and must feel included in the overall process of social change. Policies should be formulated based on the ground realities and statistics, not based upon assumptions.
New inclusion strategies need to be formulated to make sure that no person is left behind in the process of urban regeneration (Fritzpatrick et al, 1998). The importance of young persons is extremely crucial to the development of any society, because for the success of a development plan in the long run, young people in addition to other stakeholders, are key change agents that we need.
Urban regeneration is a market driven activity, where market forces play a major role. In free market economies, such a state of affair might affect young people specifically, who might be left behind in medium term, therefore, our group felt that government regulation and policy formulation is of utmost importance in this regard.