Unexpected Audience of 500000

I recall back in 2007 while working as an Assistant Professor at Boston University, I visited beautiful Kyoto, Japan for some research, and at some point realized it could be worthwhile to develop an online portfolio to post various academic and artistic activities, including photos and videos. That is when I launched this blog Sociomusicology.

Now it is really hard to believe that on the final day of September 2025, the site has attracted a half-million page views. Compared to newspapers and magazines, 500000 is not a very large number, but it is encouraging to see what can come from persistence across years, even in what would seem to be a niche academic subject area: music education, ethnomusicology, comparative education. I will post here an analysis of the traffic to this site, which could be interesting for anyone else who might also consider making a blog of their academic work.

One interesting point worth noting here is that the Singapore numbers look unbelievable, but across time I have realized this is due to the number of mainland Chinese who use a VPN that merely causes them to appear to be based in Singapore. 

 

Malaysian Music Research

It was a pleasant surprise to be invited by two different universities this Autumn to serve as a PhD examiner for students from Malaysia who have completed quite interesting doctoral dissertations.

One dissertation is a mixed methods empirical research study at the Royal College of Music, London, that examines how musical expressiveness is learned among Malaysian college students, with particular attention to non-western understandings of expressiveness in music performance.

Another doctoral dissertation is performance-based, an artistic research study at Malaysia’s leading private university (UCSI University) that examines the characters and vocal characteristics of soprano roles in opera.

I look forward to learning from this innovative research, and to posing some useful questions, and will report in detail here when the process is completed with new music Doctors from an exciting part of the world.  

Indeed, Malaysia is a quite interesting country, with a megadiverse tropical environment, and over 34 million people in a rapidly developing economy. It is notable that Malaysia invests heavily in education and has over 20 universities. There is an array of traditional music genres Malaysia, from the Nobat court music to genres associated with dance drama traditions, as well as regional and minority folk music styles, and even lovely children’s songs. 

Also, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, along with a new generation of singers and other world-class performers, have become known in the global field of western classical art music.

We can surely expect Malaysia to continue becoming an even more globally-impactful place for music and education in the coming years.

Chinese Translation Published

It was exciting to learn yesterday that a book I developed with Jon McCollum is now being published in Chinese translation by a team of outstanding music scholars.

Click HERE for more details (in Chinese language).

AI vs. IP in Music: An Issue for Ethnomusicology

I eagerly look forward to co-hosting the 2025 SEM Historical Ethnomusicology Section meetings with its current Chair, Otto Stuparitz, and to giving the following presentation at the 70^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. 

AI vs. IP: Who Owns the World’s Music Today?

David G. Hebert (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) 

Abstract: 

At the 2025 Paris AI Summit, VPOTUS Vance declared to world leaders that “excessive regulation” harms the AI industry and will not be tolerated by the USA. His position contrasts with another VP, that of the world’s largest music company (Universal), who denounced AI’s “wholesale hijacking of the intellectual property of the entire creative community.” Indeed, as Suchir Balaji showed, the “fair use” doctrine cannot reasonably apply to the “training” of AI, whether in the form of text, images, or music, since the resulting synthetic products are designed to compete commercially with human-made creations. Law has arguably not kept pace with new technologies, including music AI, which flagrantly violates the spirit of copyright. How are ethnomusicologists to respond to AI in ways consistent with our values? Currently, the US, China, and Europe are the main centers of AI innovation, and of these the EU most explicitly protects privacy and AI safety (e.g. GDPR, EU AI Act). The US is also one of the only major countries that is not a signatory to major international agreements for safe AI development. Since SEM is a US-based organization, its members must consider the impact these US policies will ultimately have on music ownership and music creation worldwide. Based on a decolonial approach to IP in the context of international law, this presentation will identify established ethnomusicological values, then outline the legal arguments (and counterarguments) for regulating AI to protect musicians, promote cultural survival, and even ensure the future of human personal identity.

 

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This theme is also related to the work that our new postdoctoral researcher, Karan Choudhary, will pursue over the next few years, and who I hope may join me in future SEM conferences. His earlier work appears in the book Ethnomusicology and Cultural Diplomacy as well as various law journals. 

 

Image source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta#/media/File:Atlanta_Skyline_-_Piedmont_Park.png