Samenvatting

This paper seeks to understand the role of valuing in urban live music ecologies. It explains how multiple actors (e.g. directors of music venues, musicians, policy-makers, and real estate experts) in Dutch live music ecologies negotiate the different values of live music. To examine this dynamic, we use insights from literature on innovation ecosystems from the field of business, as well as research on live music ecologies from popular music studies literature. Enhancing the conceptualisation of live music ecologies, we distinguish four dimensions of live music ecologies (live music as a material reality, a network of actors and organisations, a social institution, and a lived cultural practice) and four values (cultural, social, economic, and spatial). We use this perspective specifically to analyse the process of valuing on the levels of musicians, venues and festivals, and cities in the Netherlands. Drawing upon 45 in-depth interviews, we demonstrate how in live music ecologies the various understandings of value need to be aligned by venues and festivals, value slippage occurs for musicians, and values should be anchored in specific places and urban policies on the city level.