Project founder Craig Hamilton with some additional info on Harkive 2022, and why it’ll be slightly different from now on.
Harkive was initially devised as the final project for my MA Music Industries degree, and it ran for the first time in 2013. Almost immediately, the project took off. #harkive became a trending topic; thousands of people told their stories; the project was featured in media outlets across the world (even appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme!); and my MA turned into a PhD, and then into a research career.
Over the years since 2013, Harkive continued to run on single days in July and – such was the volume and complexity of the response to it – I had to teach myself how to code and use machine learning algorithms to make sense of it all. Thinking about how data-derived technologies intersected with music became my academic ‘niche’, my calling card, my intellectual project. All of that thinking began with a simple idea: ask people how, where and why they listen to music. It’s funny how things turn out.
Each year, many of the same people would return to the project, enthusiastically promoting it and getting others involved. I have always been hugely grateful for that. Each July, the stories continued to come in, from all over the world. Tweets from New Zealand start the processes, tweets from California close it off. In the middle, the bulk of the stories come from the UK – starting around 6am local time, with tea and the radio, and ending around midnight with ‘one more record before bed’. Some of those stories are funny, some are sad, but all of them – together – detail how intrinsic and special music is to our everyday lives. What a lovely thing!
Then something changed for me. Like many people, the period of COVID lockdowns from March 2020 onwards led to some reflection. Although I hugely enjoyed being an academic, there were many elements of that life that were not making me happy. Ultimately, in the late summer of 2021, I decided that it was time for a change. Eventually, in December 2021, I left my position at Birmingham City University and took up a role outside of academia.
This move had a couple of important consequences for Harkive. In the main, the project lost its associated research process – and with that the assurances I could previously give contributors about how the data I gathered would be used. An additional consequence was time, given that I now have a full-time role not focussed on media research. Taken together, these changes in my personal circumstances meant that I could no longer continue to run the annual Harkive days (and all that goes with them) in the same way as I had done previously.
However, I was also aware that Harkive had over the years become something of an annual event for a small group of people who enjoy talking about music with others on public, online platforms. It seemed to me that it would be a shame if Harkive simply stopped because I was no longer an academic.
So, I started to think of ways it could continue.
Not only that, but because of the longitudinal element I baked into a project at inception – it runs on a single day each year, which implies every year – it was important to me that we didn’t ‘skip’ a year. That would create a hole in the data that would never be filled, and one of the coolest things about Harkive (in my opinion) is that it has grown into a fairly unique snapshot of music listening over the last decade. Again, it would be a shame if that stopped simply because I decided to change careers!
Another important thing I considered was that I wanted to leave open the possibility of Harkive continuing as ‘academic research’ at some point in the future. To that end, I have had some discussions with a number of academic colleagues about the possibility of them taking it on as a ‘proper’ project in future. Unfortunately, time has run away with me and I’ve not been able to get something in place for 2022. But, again, it that were to happen, then there couldn’t really be a hole where 2022 should be.
For all of those reasons, then, Harkive will run again this year. It’ll just have to be a bit….different.
It will be low-key, certainly, and my new role means that the ‘shop’ isn’t going to be manned during the day itself. There also isn’t really a planned output beyond continuity, although I will still collect the data in order to keep the set complete.
In short, then, Harkive will just happen, and we’ll see what happens!
It may return as ‘proper’ academic research at some point in the future, or it may just continue as its own, online ‘thing’ – a nice, annual curio – a social media distraction where we get together and talk about music together. It may evolve into something else entirely. I have no idea, true be told, but all of that will come out in the wash, in time.
As far as you regular contributors are concerned, I guess you just do what you normally do – tell your stories, include the #harkive hashtag, and enjoy the day.
Hopefully you’ll find a new artist, album or song that you love. Hopefully you’ll have fun. And hopefully, the sun will shine, like it always seems to do on Harkive days. You can set you watch by it.
Happy Harkiving on Tuesday 19th July.
Craig