Sustainable ethnomusicology: Technology, marketing, and revenue

Most ethnomusicological training requires fieldwork and lab techniques in which students gain technical skills related to the acquisition of data related to fieldwork. Although the work we do as ethnomusicologists sits at the forefront of gathering engaging, relevant content related to musical expressions, most ethnomusicologists are ill equipped in delivering their findings to a broader audience through the use of new media and post-production techniques such as video, sound, and image editing, web development, database administration, and network administration, among many others. Although plenty of literature about developing these skills exists as stand-alone instruction, in this essay I present a bird’s-eye view of content production from an ethnomusicological perspective, providing an understanding of not only content production but how intersects with revenue and ethnomusicological goals. I do so by sharing more than twenty years of experience as an IT specialist and consultant and by exploring some examples of content production at Smithsonian Folkways.