Introduction: policy and popular music

This special issue of Perfect Beat has its origins in the Policy Notes: Local Music in Global Creative Economies project, which was funded by the Australian Research Council between 2009 and 2011. Led by Shane Homan, the project examined popular music policy in Australia, New Zealand and Scotland and culminated in the world’s first conference on popular music policy, which took place in Melbourne in June 2012. Academics, activists and policy-makers came together to debate, argue, analyse and ponder the diverse range of policy initiatives around popular music from across the globe (albeit with a clear Anglophonic bias). In this issue we present updated versions of some of the papers from the conference. We are delighted that Perfect Beat has recognized the importance of policy within popular music studies by publishing this special issue. Here we outline some broad trends as well as introducing the papers that follow