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Dear colleagues, Details are below of a special issue of the journal Popular Music, on popular music policy. This comes via John Street, of UEA. Dave Hesmondhalgh Popular Music announces a special issue on POPULAR MUSIC POLICY. Getting on for a quarter of a century now European countries, led by Holland's StichtingPomuziek Nederland and Denmark's Dansk Rock Samråd, have funded state agencies to promote national popular music industries (and to complement arts councils designed to subsidise uncommercial music-making). In the same period the economic and social changes brought about by globalisation and digitalisation have meant that all governments (not just those in the West) have had to engage with popular music as a policy issue, whether with regard to copyright legislation, media regulation or the promotion and/or preservation of national culture. The purpose of this special issue of Popular Music is to give scholars and practitioners an opportunity to examine the history of state music policies and to reflect on their effects. What assumptions lie behind popular music policies? How should their success (or failure) be assessed? Are cultural and culture industry policies compatible? How do national political and cultural differences affect policy measures in this field? What role (if any) has academic expertise played in policy formation? Popular Music would welcome empirically grounded papers on these or any other related topics. They can take the form of full articles (5,000-8,000 words); or shorter pieces (c3,000 words for the Middle Eight section). The guest editors for this special issue will be Martin Cloonan (University of Glasgow) and Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh); Prospective contributors should, in the first instance, send an abstract of 200-300 words to the editors, Simon Frith ([log in to unmask]) and Martin Cloonan ([log in to unmask]). The deadline for these submissions is the end of May 2006, with full articles due by December 2006. All submissions will be peer reviewed in the normal way.