The city Umeå in northern Sweden was elected to become the European culture capital for 2014. This was a result of the city’s desire to lead the way in the new culture-driven growth that we have seen since the start of the millennium. Umeå has big plans to expand, and cultural development is the central strategy they have decided on to reach the city’s goals. Because Umeå is such a prominent music-city it is interesting to study how the music scene has been affected by this. The aim of this study is to analyse how the local music scene, both the physical and the cultural, has been affected by the way the city has used culture to advertise the city and to fuel the population growth. This has been done through mapping of the active music scenes, with interviews and through information gathered by local newspapers. When analysing this material, it became clear that after this strategy had been implemented there have been a change in the local music scene, but maybe not the one the city would have thought.

In 2014 the city of Umeå was initiated as European capital of culture (ECoC). In applications to get the title the municipality of Umeå had used the cities great number of musicians. However, these local musicians were strangely absent in the year long program. Also, in combination with the lack of representation, a couple of beloved local venues used for live music were either moved away from central Umeå or closed down, which led to dissent among local musicians.The aim of this study was to analyse how local musicians in interviews described the conditions of playing live music in Umeå. I was also interested in how they talked about the city as a renowned music town, post-ECoC.Through my interviews I found out that many of my informants missed a specific local venue that was shut down during, but not because of, the ECoC year of 2014. This sense of place and the loss of it were of major importance for my interviewees, as it had a great effect on how they felt about ECoC 2014. I also performed an observation of a liveshow to see how place mattered to the audience and musicians.