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From 1-3 November 2023, the 14th International Music Business Research Days took place at University of Agder in Kristainsand, Norway. Two POPLIVE researchers presented their recent work at the conference. This conference is commissioned by the International Music Business Research Association (IMBRA). 

Erik Hitters presented the paper Business as usual? The Dutch live music ecosystem before and after COVID, that he co-authored with Pauwke Berkers and Martijn Mulder. Based on a large amount of data on live music in the Netherlands before and after the pandemic, Erik assessed the resilience of the live sector. One of the main conclusions is that the years of lockdowns mainly accelerated developments that had already started before the pandemic, such as the move towards a better gender balance on the pop stages and a decrease in the number of festival performances. Based on resilience theory, Erik concludes that within the live sector during and after corona, there has been partial bounce forward resilience but mostly bounce back resilience; in other words, the sector returned to business as usual

Martijn Mulder presented the paper Exploring the potential of mapping live music: Lessons from four European cities, based on the Live Music Mapping Project that was initiated by Aston University’s Patrycja Rozbicka, co-authored by Adam Behr. In his presentation, Martijn gave the audience a sneak preview of the project that produces interactive geographical maps to the live music supply in European cities. He presented the cases of Birmingham (UK) and Rotterdam (NL), and also referred to specific applications applied by researchers in Liverpool and Milan to increase the potential value of these maps. More information about the project and the city maps can be found at livemusicresearch.org.