Matthew Day Blackmar is a musicologist, media/information studies scholar, and classical/pop musician whose research interests orbit the figure of the musical amateur, engaging contemporary digital practice, modern recording engineering and sound design, and nineteenth-century print cultures—each through the critical lenses of the social construction of technology, musical authorship and borrowing, and “intellectual property.”
His two book projects respectively examine the pre-history of the “AI turn”—reconciling hip-hop as a digital-music practice with the twenty-first-century algorithmic automation and privatization of music copyright administration—and nineteenth-century print cultures of sheet-music publishing.
Blackmar regularly attends the annual conference of the International Society for Music-Information Retrieval, where he conducts ethnographic fieldwork on AI and copyright with software developers and audio engineers. He has presented his research at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society (2011, 2024), the Society for Ethnomusicology (2024), and the Society for American Music (2014, 2025) and has contributed to symposia or delivered guest lectures in Paris, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Newcastle, Munich, Bologna, New York City, Cambridge, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
His writing has appeared (or will soon appear) in print in the Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater, The Musicology Review, and the Journal of Musicological Research. He received the 2024 Paul A. Pisk Prize, 2024–25 Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship, 2024–25 Jan La Rue Travel Grant for Research to Europe, and 2011 Ingolf Dahl Award from the American Musicological Society as well as the 2011 Article Prize from The Musicology Review.
Prior to attending UCLA, Blackmar performed as a DJ and contributed keyboards, programming, and string arrangements to indie pop, hip-hop, and heavy-metal recordings in Los Angeles. He studied piano with Jacobs School alumnus Gayle Blankenburg and jazz pianist Nachito Herrera, and orchestral percussion and jazz drumming with Elliot Fine.