Live Music Ecologies: Mapping Live Music in Urban Economies

Abstract

Music makes a significant economic contribution and is a source of cultural sustenance across cities (EC, 2006; IFPI-Oxford Economics, 2020), drawing attention to, and bringing both economic and cultural capital to localities. Each regional context produces a complex live music ecosystem of musical and non-musical actors and concerns – from venues, promoters and musicians to licensing, health, policing, and transport. Managing the interplay between distinctive regional and national circumstances, while negotiating interconnected commercial and civic priorities, represents a challenge to policymakers and businesses in identifying, accessing and interpreting credible sources of data and making informed strategic decisions. To meet this challenge the proposed volume engages with two core themes: Firstly, the valuation and measurement of live music ecologies by recognising relations between venues, stakeholders and their polities. Secondly, by examining results generated through a novel methodological approach based on mapping as a viable representation of the cultural and social dynamics. This methodology, in turn, leads to addressing questions on policy, aiming to improve policy decision-making that impacts on live music industries in urban environments. The empirical base of the volume is the Live Music Mapping Project (LMMP), a research consortium that works to measure the economic and socio-cultural impact using a geospatial approach to live music ecosystems. LMMP’s methods have derived from industry and policy-facing academic research to produce a bespoke process for mapping live music ecosystems in specific locations. These are focused on the creation of digital maps of music ecosystems, presenting music sector data integrated with other publicly accessible sources (e.g. national statistical datasets, historical house price data, rateable property valuations etc.) to broaden and strengthen the policymaking intelligence capacity. The volume involves a set of contributions from LMMP team members covering the background to the work; technical aspects of the live music mapping methodology; and European scope case-studies of its deployment and implementation; along with lessons learned. The proposed co-authored monograph aligns with the Geographies of Media series in the following way: • The volume is based on a multi/cross disciplinary approach devised to deliver data-led solutions to research challenges surrounding the spatial mapping, informed policy-making, and evaluation of the socio-cultural value of live music ecosystems. • The volume clearly recognises existence of urban geographies built through a focus on live music performance spaces. However, following the live music ecosystem definition, this is also positioned as a complex interplay of actors at various levels (local, regional, national) enhancing the purely physical understanding of urban creative economies. • The publication is based on the research project that deploys GIS measurement techniques as one of its research methodologies, enhanced through digital visualisation. As such, the book engages with the fluid border of the political systems when it comes to music policies through use of a novel methodology and discusses its implication on policy analysis and impact on policy-making.