Emma Webster

Analysing Live Music in the UK: Findings One Year into a Three-Year Research Project

This is the first of four related articles in this journal presenting findings from an ongoing research project on the history of live music in the UK since 1950. This introductory article outlines the project’s starting assumption—that popular music culture in this period was organised around the constantly changing relationship of the recorded music and live music sectors—and suggests that this is to challenge the conventional academic assumption that the post-war history of popular music can be written as the history of the record industry. To approach popular music history from the perspective of live musical promotion means a) rethinking periodisation; b) examining a very wide range of musical activities; c) paying attention to the regulatory and the promotional roles of the state; d) understanding the importance of locality and place; e) reconceiving the power structure of musical institutions.

Live Concert Performance: An Ecological Approach

For the last decade we have been engaged in the study of the history, economics, and sociology of live music in Britain. In this article we will consider the value of “ecology” as an analytic concept (rather than just a buzzword) and compare an ecological account of the setting in which music happens to the use of previous spatial metaphors, from Durkheim’s milieus to Straw’s scenes. To illustrate our argument, we present case studies of three Scottish concerts: one in a small-scale venue (Glasgow’s King Tut’s), one in a mid-size venue (Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall), and one in a large-scale venue, the 12,000-seater SSE Hydro.