Music industry precarity and the East–West relation in Europe

This panel aims to highlight and problematize inequalities and power relations in Europe between “East” and “West” affecting artists and the broader music industry ecosystem. It explores music industry discourse and practice around precarity, uncertainty, and crisis, resilience and growth. It also discusses what we may all learn from taking the music industries and the working conditions of musicians in Eastern Europe as starting point. It looks into the economic, political, and social uncertainty and change that have been a constant, historical condition, and where musical careers and industries have been sustained by a vast, complex understructure of unseen, un- or underpaid, informal contributions.