Sam Howard-Spink

Sam Howard-Spink PhD is Clinical Associate Professor of Music Business in NYU Steinhardt's Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. His teaching and research interests are in the political-economic systems of international music and interactive media industries and cultures, with a focus on emerging national, regional and diasporic markets.

Emerging Models and Markets for Music (EM3), the title of the graduate course Sam designed and teaches at NYU, covers hybrid business models for music, and the music markets of Brazil and Latin America; South East Asia including South Korea, Japan, and China; India; and Pan-Africa including Nigeria, South Africa and MENA. In the undergraduate Music Business Program, Sam teaches International Music Marketplace, and Interactive, Internet, and Mobile Music, which surveys various digital and networked distribution and fan engagement models. In addition to EM3 — also offered as a January intensive course in Rio de Janeiro every other year — he co-teaches the graduate class Environment of the Music Industry, and supervises the Masters' students capstone Colloquy projects. Sam joined the Music Business faculty in 2008, and was awarded the MPAP department's Teacher Of The Year in 2009.

A Londoner by birth, Sam was a music business journalist and editor in the UK and Hong Kong before moving to New York in 1999. He has a BS in Psychology from the University of Bristol in the UK; an MA in Communications from Hunter College CUNY; and completed his PhD at NYU's Department of Media, Culture and Communication in 2012. His dissertation was a comparative study of the music markets and copyright/piracy regimes of Brazil, Canada, and the United States, examined through the critical theoretical lenses of Cultural Hybridization, Network Information Economics, and Modern Social Imaginaries. Related research interests include cultural and economic "glocalization" and hybridization, cosmopolitanism, and Music Cities; national and supranational music, cultural, and copyright policies and soft power governance; remix/mashup theory and practice; and social video, video games, holographics, and various other emergent interactive media involving music.

Sam's most recent publication is a Sage Business Case study of the K-pop group BTS's role in contemporary South Korean soft power. He has written for, among others, Music Week, Music & Copyright, The Guerrilla Guide to the Music Industry, The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, IBM Think Research and openDemocracy.net, and has published academic articles in First Monday and in Portuguese translation in Brazil. Research in 2018 included a funded study of changes to US recording industry indicators and metrics, such as Stream Equivalent Albums, and their wider musical, cultural, and political-economic implications.

Most recently, Sam has presented papers on the value and utility of glocalization theory in higher-ed music business programs at conferences at USC in California (Association of Popular Music Education Conference, 2024) and Flagler College in Florida (Research in Popular Music Conference, 2023). He has spoken on panels or given talks at South By South West, the Audio Engineering Society, the Brazilian Studies Association, and SOAS in London, as well as numerous guest lectures. In 2009, Sam curated CMJ PLAY, a one-day conference on business opportunities for musicians in the interactive, mobile apps, and gaming sectors.

Sam is a drummer and segundo surdo section leader in Brazilian bateria Samba New York!, and performs with the group regularly. He is also a former hiphop/scratch DJ, and remains an expert-level Guitar Hero on Xbox.