Studying musical creativity for managing music library services

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study and quantify musicians’ creativity in order to tune music library services and pinpoint potential musical creative activities. Design/methodology/approach/methodology/approach – Webster’s conceptual framework for the creative thinking process in music is informing our survey while the analysis adopts a multiple criteria method for quantifying musical creativity. strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is also adopted developing strategic decisions based on musicians’ creativity behaviours. Findings – Mental representations of the music heard (listening) is the most important dimension for creative thinking in music while dimensions such as recorded improvisations (improvisation), written analysis (analysis) and composed music scores (composition) follow. SWOT analysis provides further indications for music library services development based on musicians’ creativity behaviours. Originality/value – This study proposes a novel research vein based on multicriteria analysis within the contexts of musical creativity for managing music library services.