ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how popular music has come to be considered as important to cities in a range of contexts, and the central urban, industrial and cultural precepts for its uses. It explores the ways in which the "music city" has been understood and developed in Australia in the last decade, and the localized peculiarities of Australian experiences and policies. The uses of culture, high and low, to drive economic growth, and in many cases to recover "lost" urban areas and economies, have been well documented in popular music contexts. Australians favor the live experience in general: "78 tickets to performing arts events were sold for every 100 Australians in 2013". The Australian advantage in live music infrastructure has arguably placed its cities as global innovators in several ways. The Australian "music city" simply amounts to the "music venue city." Historical emphases upon live music policy have masked other struggles and other components of music city ecologies.
