Live music is of great value in the lives of many. Even in today’s age of unlimited access to digital music, the appetite for live performance is only increasing. In fact, the years preceding the pandemic in 2020 can be regarded as the best for live pop music in terms of the number of gigs, audience sizes and the amount of revenue generated. Nevertheless, the field of research on the value of live music is, to some extent, still underexposed. This book contributes to that field of research by bridging the gap between the various disciplines associated with live music, by integrating the various types of value linked to it, and by simultaneously focusing on venues and festivals as the two organisational entities that constitute the core of live music and, thus, its value creation.
The goals of this book are to map the live pop music practice in the 21st century, achieve an understanding of value creation within live music, and assess the feasibility of an ecology approach to live music. This book is built from a holistic (interdisciplinary, multi-epistemological) perspective on live music and approaches the subject from both what happens onstage, how that is organised backstage and how that is received and experienced frontstage.