ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between music and the city on the business of music in Liverpool. Liverpool Music House (LMH) was a music production and management company. The company was housed during the 1990s in a large, red-brick building that had once been a laboratory, and was therefore referred to by those involved with it as 'The Lab'. The building was situated in a narrow, deserted backstreet in a quiet part of Liverpool city centre between the financial district and the northern docklands. The local business of music was nevertheless a broad and diverse field of activity. Like LMH there were companies that specialized in artist management and promotion, the composition and recording of musical works and the post-production, promotion and marketing of music recordings. The trend towards concentration and centralization within the global recording industry had been accompanied by a parallel trend towards decentralization, dispersal and diversification, a trend that some have described as 'post-Fordist'.
