On 1 December 2014, Live At Leeds was awarded the top prize in the category of ‘Best Metropolitan Festival’ at the UK Festival Awards held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the event would not only continue in West Yorkshire, but would also be exported to Glasgow (as Live At Glasgow) in 2015. The festival, whose title and concept are palimpsestic synecdoches not only of The Who's celebrated live recording, but also of Leeds as a privileged location for live music, is clearly aiming to consolidate itself as a prime mover within an increasingly lucrative but equally cut-throat market for urban musical festivals (some of the casualties of 2014 include Brisfest and the long-running Camden Crawl, which went into liquidation after the event but before any of the bands had been paid).

The potential dividends of a modern metropolitan festival are not only economic but also symbolic, interested parties seeking to accrue one or both types of capital by varying – although not always compatible – means. As Tommy D. Andersson and Donald Getz (Reference Andersson and Getz2008, p. 203) write in relation to festivals in general, ‘[t]o become an institution, or to find and sustain a permanent niche in the community, the event organization must be expert in developing a supportive network and in managing its many diverse stakeholder relationships’. Central to these dynamics nowadays is the concept of the ‘brand’ in assorted manifestations. In this intervention, we would like to reflect on these matters as regards the production and consumption of popular music by exploring how they played out both institutionally and on stage over the course of the eighth Live At Leeds festival, held across 20 of the city's multiple small and medium-sized permanent and impromptu venues over the course of the May Day bank holiday weekend 2014.Footnote ¹ To this end, we combine material and ideological contextualisation of institutions and stakeholder interests, with analysis of performances by specific artists across a variety of performance spaces.

A city brand, as defined by Ari-Veikko Anttirroiko (Reference Anttirroiko2014, p. 166), ‘is the totality of thoughts, feelings and expectations that people have about a city’. The significant human and economic capital now dedicated to creating such brands, according to Keith Dinnie (Reference Dinnie and Dinnie2011, p. 3), ‘may be seen as part of a wider recognition that places of all kinds can benefit from implementing coherent strategies with regard to managing their resources, reputation and image’. In relation to Leeds, such a branding strategy can be observed in its hosting of the Tour de France Grand Départ in July 2014, the rising prominence of its International Film Festival (then in its 28th year), its annual Light Night (since it became the first British city to run a White Night programme in 2005), and the opening of the revamped Leeds City Museum in 2008 and of the 13,500 capacity Leeds Arena in summer 2013. In addition to the usual contributions from private businesses and national and Europe-wide public bodies (e.g. Arts Council England and MEDIA Programme), many such events are now subsidised by Leeds Inspired (www.leedsinspired.co.uk), a funding scheme and promotional initiative established in 2012 by Leeds City Council in order to mark out its long-standing financial support of culture in the municipality from its other activities.

Iconic visuals such as the skyline logo created to accompany the Grand Départ, and the owls and fleeces (from the city coat of arms) dotted among the more conventional street decorations at Christmas, provide the guise of this burgeoning city brand. It is in such a context that we need to locate Live At Leeds (henceforth LAL), organised by local promoters Futuresound, and first held in 2007 to celebrate the city's 800th anniversary. City branding's twin, commercial branding, featured prominently from the outset of LAL in 2014. The curtain-raiser to main events was the somewhat awkwardly titled ‘Unconference at Leeds College of Music’ held on Friday 2 May (the fifth year that such an event had preceded the music itself). Here, a tepid anti-establishment tone was set not only by its title, but also by the fact that all participants were provided with a free bottle of Heineken alongside their registration pack on arrival. Such an unselfconscious (and unthinking) attitude to branding was frequently exhibited by speakers and attendees alike in reference to festival organisation and to the artist's position within the industry.

This ‘brandification’ is both a cause and consequence of the professionalisation of becoming a popular musician: numerous institutions now follow the example set by the University of Westminster and its pioneering courses on popular music production, at the time of writing headed by ex-Steel Pulse member Mykaell Riley (who was also external examiner for the BA in Popular Music at Leeds College of Music in 2006 and 2007). Herein lies one of the roles of LAL as part of Leeds’ city brand and music scene. Perhaps the biggest logistical challenge facing such an undergraduate programme in West Yorkshire is that the UK music industry is primarily centred in and around London; Leeds College of Music's students and other budding musicians do not, therefore, have as much access to professionals as they would do if they were studying in the south. Moreover, there is no clear northern equivalent to Brighton's The Great Escape Festival, which functions among other things as a showcase of new talent for the industry. In the same way that the success of events such as LAL or Sheffield's Tramlines Festival has begun to counteract the fact that the majority of British music festivals have historically been held in the south (Stone Reference Stone, Ali-Knight, Robertson, Fyall and Ladkin2009, p. 211), the ‘Unconference’ went some way to settling a geo-industrial deficit in access to insider knowledge.

The morning of the ‘Unconference’ was occupied by a talk by BBC radio host Jen Long about distributing one's music and gaining exposure. Approaching the matter from the publisher's perspective, Long spoke at length about record label Kissability (kissability.co.uk), created by her and a previous employer, Transgressive Records. Her talk was followed by questions from the floor, not only from budding musicians but also from older academics. The afternoon gave everyone the choice of a Live Music panel or a Meet the Experts panel. Both proved popular with attendees. We opted for the former, in which Nick Simrock of Oporto Bar in Leeds (a venue participating in LAL), Kate Hewitt of the Tramlines Festival, Cara Kane of Bestival and Ben Ray of the multi-day travelling festivals Slam Dunk spoke about their own reasons for working in this area and their experiences over the years. At this panel, the ‘brandification’ of popular music was at its most evident, the festival being deemed much more important than its individual artists (as indicated by the fact that tickets go on sale well in advance of confirmation of line-up). Some panellists noted the importance of giving exposure to unsigned bands, reminding artists that it is crucial to have an agent. In the Q&A session that followed, another major sociological development in popular music production raised its head for the first time: the digitalisation of recorded music and information. Organisers encouraged questions via Twitter (with the hashtag #LALUnconf), one of which prompted a lengthy debate on what an ‘alternative’ sound consists of. Online fora Soundcloud and Bandcamp were highly recommended for uploading music to which festival promoters could then be pointed. Ostensibly trivial details such as sending promoters links rather than files were flagged as what could make a difference between a band being booked or not. The importance of having an agent was again underlined in discussion generated by a later question about how artists came to perform at festivals: organisers stated that they signed up many more bands having been approached by an agent than they did by approaching bands directly themselves or via unsolicited emails.

Throughout the ‘Unconference’ there was discussion of the issue of commercial sponsorship and the prominence of such brands at festivals. It was clear that all concerned had internalised (or at least accepted) this commercial fact of music festivals; their discourse made constant reference to branding in relation to both individual groups and large-scale events. This appears to be symptomatic of wider changes across the industry and among audiences. The Festival Awards Market Report 2013 contrasts a traditional reticence towards commercialisation by festival-goers with a new mindset: ‘Fortunately, audiences are much more accepting of sponsorship and brand involvement in festivals – generally accepting that the income is needed for an event to go ahead’ (Drury Reference Drury2014, p. 11). Although LAL has not gone as far as Tramlines (which for a time had Nokia as a prime sponsor), it boasts several partners. The LAL brand forms part of a network of mutually beneficial brands including Leeds Beckett University (who can hereby offer valuable work experience to increasingly career-driven undergraduates, as is made explicit on http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/partnershipvolunteering/) and Blacks Solicitors (whose presence at the aforementioned Meet the Experts panel is another instance of the professionalisation of the music industry). While the LAL booklet was replete with references to its artists’ individuality and peculiarities, its counter-culture credentials are ultimately stylistic rather than ideological.

The day ended with a lengthy and very well-attended Listening Panel featuring Jen Long, marketing manager/promoter Cath Hurley from Rough Trade, producer Richard Formby and bassist Simon Rix of local favourites Kaiser Chiefs. Yet again the issue of digitisation loomed, the panel noting that many submissions included files and links that did not work. Eight submissions were picked out of a hat and a minute of each was listened to. Panellists then gave feedback directly to the musicians concerned, all of whom sat anxiously in the audience. Comments touched upon how to approach production (self-produce or invest in a trained producer), having a clear target audience or knowing which labels specialise in which genres, the avoidance of jamming too many ideas into a single song, and how to approach labels. As music fans who first started attending live music in the late-1980s and early-1990s, what struck us most about the day was the outward recognition of commercial ambitions alongside the idea of festivals – as opposed to one-off gigs or tours – holding the key to career progression and developing a loyal audience. The latter detail explains why individual tickets at standard prices had to be paid to see any of the performers on the Friday evening: the festival brand gains from including on its programme established albeit hardly major headline-material acts (such as Blood Red Shoes and Tek-One) who, in turn, reach a wider audience thanks to festival publicity.

Such are the potential advantages of LAL for the city of Leeds: raising its profile among music fans across the north of England; fostering its role as a centre of professional development for artists and student interns alike; and generating income via the sale of food, drink and accommodation. Thus the LAL brand feeds up as well as down. Of course, all of these opportunities depend on the organisers’ success in putting bums on seats (so to speak). Therefore we now move on to examine the busiest day of the festival, Saturday 3 May, when a £25 fee (£15 to ‘early birds’ buying their ticket in the afterglow of the 2013 festival) got us a wristband and access to an entire day of live music across the city, from midday to after midnight. A significant part of the appeal of LAL – this day in particular – and other festivals can be comprehended in the light of broader changes in leisure activities and social paradigms. In the words of Ian Yeoman:

Although, in both symbolic and financial terms, our investment in the day-pass hardly ranks alongside attendance at the Glastonbury or Edinburgh Festivals, LAL's ‘social capital, richness and new experiences’ clearly rate above watching free local (and predominantly cover) bands at venues such as The New Roscoe or The Duck and Drake. The older and generally less economically affluent gig-goers at these unreconstructed watering holes were noticeably absent from the festival.

While the key element for ticket-buyers at larger festivals remains the higher-profile artists whose fees are rapidly escalating (Drury Reference Drury2014, p. 9), big name headliners have not generally proved to be a panacea or long-term solution for metropolitan festivals. When Public Enemy performed at Tramlines 2014 (a booking made in response to a sharp decline in attendance when the festival started charging for admission in 2013), there was controversy when thousands of festival-goers were unable to gain access to their headline set at the 6,600 capacity Devonshire Green (The Star (Sheffield) 2014). Likewise, the booking of Primal Scream at Ashton Court as part of Brisfest in 2013, although a popular choice at the time, did not provide a sustainable model for the festival. A more modest event than Tramlines or Brisfest, LAL 2014 booked a number of established and well-known acts such as Albert Hammond Jr and The Hold Steady, but no stars who could headline bigger festivals. While the only performances we actually had difficulty gaining access to were daytime events held at city-centre bars Oporto and the Nation of Shopkeepers (most likely because these venues appeared to allow in non-festival-goers as well as those with wristbands), a number of other significant gigs to which we did not plan to go did reach their capacities. Unsurprisingly, last-minute addition to the roster Frank Turner packed out Leeds Town Hall. The logistics and hazards involved in hosting a festival for over 5,000 people but whose venues rarely had space for more than 400 were handled effectively by means of the free app and Twitter, festival standards in the age of the smartphone, which provided users with regular updates on performance times and accessibility. In this way, just as the initial rationale behind the creation of Tramlines was to attract people into Sheffield city centre in the summer when the exodus of students meant that local businesses frequently struggled (The Sheffield Telegraph 2014 ), so LAL ensured that the city centre and university and college campuses bustled with life during the long May Day weekend.

A significant component of the LAL strategy as an urban festival is to capitalise on the broad range of pre-existing venues spread across a relatively compact city-centre area (e.g. Hi-Fi) and on or close to the university campuses nearby (e.g. Brudenell Social Club), alongside other central venues not routinely employed to this end and for which live music is a means to an end rather than an end in itself (e.g. Sela Bar). Capacities range from over 2,000 (Leeds Union Refectory and O2 Academy) to 50 at a push (downstairs at Milos). All venues are found within a kilometre or so from central traffic artery The Headrow, distances between the majority being covered in less than 15 minutes on foot. Although the billing of the festival as a whole was pretty generic, under the LAL umbrella specific venues effectively operated as micro-brands with a careful alignment sought between bands booked for venues programmed for audiences likely to have particular tastes. While this strategy was not always successful (see below), it was, for example, a logical choice that rock bar The Cockpit host the NME Stage (which included artists such as Wolf Alice),Footnote ² and that Hi-Fi (three-times winner of ‘Best Nightclub’ and ‘Best Live Music Venue’ at the annual Leeds Bar and Club Awards, and well-known centre of hip-hop in Leeds) was booked for a rising international act such as Minneapolitan rapper Lizzo.

This is all very well, you may say, but was the day any good? Besides the subjectivity in any artistic evaluation or review process, any endeavour to comment upon the festival is further complicated by the impossibility of seeing more than a fraction of the events on offer: we did not, for example, see any of the acts who were reviewed in the NME's feature on LAL (Avron and Daly Reference Avron and Daly2014). Nevertheless, this very dynamic enabled us to chance upon new city spaces and artists: we saw local singer-songwriter Harry Ridgway at the central Holy Trinity Church, a building that we had never entered despite walking past this location on an almost daily basis, and were highly impressed by Y.O.U.'s electronic pop (and all-white outfits), who we caught by chance at Hi-Fi before Lizzo's performance. Although not all of the acts were to our tastes, none of them we saw gave the impression of clocking on and off, perhaps because many have yet to give up the day job and/or see LAL as an apprenticeship for a professional career in music. On several occasions, bands’ performances were raised by the energy and inventiveness of their drummer, a matter the two of us have often deliberated over in relation to veteran acts, on whom the ageing process has taken its toll.

Not much can be done about the poor acoustics of the various University of Leeds venues, although in the case of Los Campesinos, they managed to turn this scenario to their advantage: the limited vocal range of their lead-singer, Gareth Campesinos, was somewhat compensated for by their collective stage charisma and a vocal audience familiar with at least the choruses of a number of their best-known songs. The lack of natural daylight in the central performance space of the brutalist architecture of Leeds Beckett's city-centre campus provided a fitting venue for a late-afternoon set by cult electronic band Fuck Buttons, the volume and intensity of whose set held their fans rapt, while quickly prompting most of the passing trade to make a sharp exit. In a different musical vein, the anthemic Amber Run's fanbase, generated by the band's appearance at previous LALs (a strategy mentioned at the Unconference), helped make up for the nondescript stage at Leeds College of Music. Less fortunate to be scheduled at the same venue was Lyla Foy, technically very proficient but whose voice and songs were better suited to somewhere more intimate. It was at this concert that the drawbacks of allowing audiences to speak and to enter and leave performances spaces for drinks or to move on to other venues – in many ways part of the appeal of a festival – were most notable.

Our LAL experience ended across the road at The Wardrobe, with King Charles. Although there was something self-satisfied about their fusion of reggae and punk, both their sounds and audience were reminiscent of a performance at the same venue the month before by Brazilian funk musician Ed Motta, who has complemented a very commercially successful solo career encompassing multiple genres from rock to jazz with translating Phil Collins's songs for Disney's Tarzan into Portuguese. The fact that we chose to leave King Charles to watch a riotous brass tribute act in the venue above undoubtedly says more about our generation and taste markers verging on prejudices than it does about LAL.

Britain's slow recovery from the global crisis means that the value of enrichment goods and services to the UK economy is predicted to rise in the UK from £216 billion in 2008 to £395 in 2023 (Yeoman Reference Yeoman2013, p. 255). While modest in its contribution to such growth, LAL undoubtedly sees itself as part of this development. The concept of brand, we envisage, will continue to form part of the promotional strategies of Futuresound, its partners, and musicians. This is especially evident in Leeds City Council's current consultations about a possible bid to be European City of Culture in 2023 (http://www.leeds.gov.uk/council/Pages/European-Capital-of-Culture-2023.aspx). The potential benefits of success in such an application, both short term (booking major international artists to headline that year) and longer term (rivalling Tramlines and urban festivals in the south), mean that it is most probable that LAL's organisers are following these developments closely. Equally, whatever misgivings we may have about the branding of popular music and the increasing monopolisation of festivals in the nurturing of new talent and live music in general, it is clear that fans and scholars of popular music need to remain sharply attuned to industrial and aesthetic progressions in events such as LAL.