Music making requires resources—time, space, equipment, expertise—and the allocation of these resources is never neutral. From state arts funding to commercial investment, from educational provision to platform algorithms, decisions about which music gets made, heard and valued are shaped by power structures that often remain unexamined. This project investigates how governance systems, funding models and institutional frameworks enable or constrain musical practice, and explores what evidence-based policy might look like if it genuinely served practitioners and audiences rather than incumbent interests. Research directions include:

• Informing policy with practitioner knowledge. What kinds of research and evidence should funders, policymakers and arts organisations actually be commissioning? How can practice research contribute to better-informed cultural policy? What gets lost when policy debates rely solely on economic impact assessments and participation statistics?
• Examining the commodification of music making. How do instrument manufacturers, software companies, educational institutions and platform providers transform musicians from autonomous practitioners into consumers of products and services? What are the aesthetic, economic and creative consequences of these dependencies?
• Understanding stakeholder motivations beyond stated goals. What do the various participants in music ecosystems—artists, audiences, investors, institutions, platforms—actually want from musical activity? How do their interests align or conflict? Whose interests are currently served by existing governance structures?
• Developing alternative models. What can we learn from cooperative ownership, community-led organisations, open-source development and mutual aid structures? How might different governance models redistribute power and resources in ways that better support diverse musical practices and sustainable creative careers?