This edited collection offers evocative ways into a range of fascinating worlds of popular music, from the Ecuadorian indie scene to Chinese rock. In exploring the experiences of musicians, fans, industry professionals and academics, the rich complexity of popular music is brought to life through ethnography as an immersive approach to undertaking and communicating research.

Experimenting with ethnography through the joys and tribulations of musical production, fandom and scholarship, these collated studies critically consider what it means to be a popular music ethnographer and to take an ethnographic approach to studying popular music.

Alongside these chapters, musicians, venue owners, music writers, live music photographers, and fans add their voices and experience in the form of shorter vignettes, ordering the content into three overlapping themes: practices; places; and identities.