Holly Tessler

I returned to the Department of Music in January, 2019, having completed my MBA (Music Industries) and PhD here in the 2000s.

I previously held the post of Senior Lecturer, Commercial Music and Programme Leader, MA Music (Industries) at the University of the West of Scotland, from 2011-2019. I have also held various Music Industries lectureships at Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts), the University of East London and Birmingham City University.

In addition, I have nearly ten years of commercial radio experience, having worked with several commercial and public radio stations in my native Philadelphia, including WXPN-FM (88.5), WIP-AM (610) and WMMR-FM (93.3), as well as serving as Music Manager for Radio Computing Services (RCS) in New York.

Since rejoining the Department, I created two university record labels: Redbrick Records, for staff research projects and original releases; and Merciful Sound, a fully student-run record label. I have also established the department's new postgraduate taught degree, MA The Beatles, Music Industry and Heritage, launching September, 2021.

I am also founding co-editor of the Journal of Beatles Studies, published by Liverpool University Press. https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/id/113/

My research interests include the Beatles, music industries, music industries as creative industries, Garage Rock/Medway Sound, music branding, cultural branding, interactive audio, popular music culture and popular music history.

Research:

The Beatles

My research interest in the Beatles is in seeking to understand how their music, history/histories and narrative(s) circulate throughout popular music and culture in various mediated forms, including: popular and classical music, film, radio, television programming and advertising, tourism and heritage, publishing, retail/consumer culture as well as online and social media.

Music industries as creative industries

My current research in this area investigates what I have termed the Immersive Economy. Extending Pine and Gilmour's (1999) notion of the 'Experience Economy,' I study the ways in which music products help to form strategic, time-delimited and adaptive brand meta-narratives, which provide a range of unique yet interrelated brand interactions across discrete retail, consumption and engagement touchpoints.

The Medway Sound/Garage Rock

My research investigates the understudied 'Medway Sound': the acts, venues, recording studios and art-music-creative networks within Medway's 'Five Towns' region.