You Get to Know the Scene Inside Out, but the Cost of Travel is a Burden: The Impacts of Isolation and Peripherality on the Contemporary Music Scene of Perth, Western Australia

This chapter explores the impacts and influences of geographical isolation and peripherality on the functioning of the contemporary music scene in Perth, Western Australia. Drawing on interviews with musicians and industry practitioners active during a particularly pivotal period for the scene’s integration with national and international markets—the mid–late 1990s through to the mid-2000s—this chapter also considers the influences of the city’s historically cheap rents and relatively small local music market on the capacity for the scene to take advantage of the critical mass of interest in its music during this time period. In turn it explores the ways in which its relatively small, and concentrated local market impact the sustention of careers within and beyond the city.