Abstract
The cultural and creative ecosystem in general, and the popular music sector in particular, has been strongly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the music ecosystem has engaged in a reorientation and aims to strengthen its resilience to fend off possible future external shocks. The concept of resilience as it pertains to music ecosystems, however, is often merely used as a metaphor and lacks analytical understanding of its constituting principles. In this chapter, we aim to translate existing resilience research on natural ecosystems into a conceptualisation of resilience and ecosystems for the music industry, in order to offer a more systematic lens to examine the popular music ecosystem in terms of its resilience. We focus particularly on the role of diversity in maintaining a resilient ecosystem. As we will show, diversity is a broad concept, ranging from a diversity of business models that foster competitiveness, to inclusion of minoritised groups, languages and genres, increasing access and fairness, and perceive diversity as crucial in fostering resilience, as it provides the basis for innovation, learning, and adaptation. This chapter contributes (1) to the conceptualisation of an existing model of resilience for the music industries and its application to the popular music ecosystem and (2) to understand the crucial role of diversities in building resilience, which may inform music policies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Global Creative Ecosystems |
| Subtitle of host publication | A Critical Understanding of Sustainable Creative and Cultural Production |
| Editors | Tarek Virani |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 135-151 |
| Publication status | Published - 22 Aug 2023 |