The unifying power of live music events: A systematic review of social outcomes for audience members

Abstract

Live music events (including concerts, shows, and festivals) have been central to community gatherings for many years, but the extent to which audience members experience social benefits during these events is not yet clear. In this systematic review, we review research on shared live music experiences to understand the scope of these initiatives, the quality of the research, and their social impact across different genres and types of live music events. The pre-registered review was conducted using eight search engines, selecting for peer-reviewed papers published in English between 1990 and 2023. The 56 papers included in the review (comprising 59 studies) represented a range of live music..