ABSTRACT

Researching Live Music offers an important contribution to the emergent field of live music studies.

Featuring paradigmatic case studies, this book is split into four parts, first addressing perspectives associated with production, then promotion and consumption, and finally policy. The contributors to the book draw on a range of methodological and theoretical positions to provide a critical resource that casts new light on live music processes and shows how live music events have become central to raising and discussing broader social and cultural issues. Their case studies expand our knowledge of how live music events work and extend beyond the familiar contexts of the United States and United Kingdom to include examples drawn from Argentina, Australia, France, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Poland.

Researching Live Music is the first comprehensive review of the different ways in which live music can be studied as an interdisciplinary field, including innovative approaches to the study of historic and contemporary live music events. It represents a crucial reading for professionals, students, and researchers working in all aspects of live music.

part I|68 pages

Promotion

chapter 181|12 pages

Festivals, free and unfree

Alex Cooley and the American rock festival

chapter 2|13 pages

As long as they go home safe

The voice of the independent music festival promoter

chapter 3|12 pages

Under the cover of darkness

Situating “covers gigs” within live music ecologies

chapter 5|17 pages

Disruption and continuity

Covid-19, live music, and cyclic sociality

part II|56 pages

Production

chapter 7|12 pages

Mobile spectacle

Es Devlin's Pandemonium tour design

chapter 8|12 pages

Fulfilling the hospitality rider

Working practices and issues in a tour's supply chain

part III|56 pages

Consumption

chapter 14210|13 pages

Making music public

What would a sociology of live music promotion look like? 1

chapter 11|14 pages

Dead stars live

Exploring holograms, liveness, and authenticity

chapter 12|13 pages

Live … as you've always heard it before

Classic rock, technology, and the re-positioning of authenticity in live music performance

chapter 13|14 pages

Approaching the live from a distance

The unofficial Led Zeppelin archive 1

part IV|53 pages

Policy

chapter 15|13 pages

State of play

Tensions and interventions in live music policy

chapter 16|13 pages

Por Más Músicas Mujeres en Vivo!

The Live Music Female Quota law and its implications for Argentine music festivals

chapter 17|12 pages

Beyond live shows

Regulation and innovation in the French live music video economy