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Touch. 30 Years and Counting - Music Publication

2012 was the 30th anniversary of Touch, an innovative independent music-publishing project founded by Wozencroft to transform the idea of a record label by positioning equal focus on art direction, artist management and curation. Produced for this anniversary, the double LP and CD Touch 30 Years and Counting showcased each artist/musician working with Touch, alongside design and art direction curated and produced by Wozencroft. The edition of 2000 sold out in 10 days and was reviewed in The Wire in January 2013.

Accompanying the LP, the ‘Touch 30’ festival, curated by Wozencroft, was held in December 2012 with artists Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, Ryoji Ikeda, Tony Myatt, Peter Saville, Thomas Köner, Biosphere and Hildur Gudnadottir amongst others. In 2012 Wozencroft was commissioned to present a showcase of Touch’s live performances and films at the ‘Decibel Festival’ in Seattle, the world’s largest electronic music festival. Wozencroft screened Liquid Music (Wozencroft/Fennesz) in a sold-out Q&A event and hosted a seminar/lecture titled ‘The future of the record label’ with Jonathan Poneman, head of A&R at the SubPop label, first home to Nirvana. In March 2012 a Touch app was launched for the iPhone, which received coverage in The Guardian, The Wire and numerous online sites.

The 30th anniversary releases, events and activities were developed through research undertaken by Wozencroft to explore and test new business models and music publishing formats in an economic climate characterised by the evaporation of conventional modes of distribution. In the face of ‘download culture’ and the diminishing role of music business hierarchies, the research foregrounded the sustainability of individual commercial music practices and the hybridisation of publishing identities. The project is catalogued at http://30.touchmusic.org.uk, which also contains documentation of the widespread impact the project has generated on the alternative music scene.