Tuning in: Setting the scene for music tourism

This chapter explores the contemporary music tourism, first of all through tracing the particular connections between music and place that induce tourism. Because of its abstract nature, music differs from other art forms in the way it evokes ideas of place. Music can be connected to place through instrumentation or musical structure. The interrelations between music and place have been on the scientific agenda for quite some time. In tourism studies, attention at the outset was paid mainly to music tourism from a management perspective, looking at the ways audiences could be managed during festivals and in popular destinations, and how specific sites and cities could become attractive sites for music pilgrimage. Broadening the empirical horizon of music tourism research through including different kinds of music tourism cases and focusing more on the music tourist requires the further development of music tourism theory.