In spring 2011, Simon Frith, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan, and Emma Webster co-organized a conference held at the University of Edinburgh on “The Business of Live Music.” A culminating event in the research team’s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project to study live music promotion in the United Kingdom, “The Business of Live Music” conference was to my knowledge the first academic conference wholly devoted to the study of live music. The majority of participants were from British universities, but there were also presenters from the United States, Canada, Australia, and continental Europe. For me, and no doubt for many of the other attendees, it felt like the conference announced the existence of a field that had previously lacked the visibility or coherence to be recognized. The conference focus on the business of live music reflected the primary interest of the organizers in live music promotion, a focus that directed...

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