Taking into account the discourses on space and place, UMS do not understand the “city” as a container, where musical events happen, but as a complex negotiating process between all agents involved, making the city a social construct of these relations. Therefore, the research in this field includes topics such as urban politics and policies, the political economy of urban structures, conditions and processes, the political economy of music, spatial and educational policies, new urbanism, tourism, ethnologies of music, and the management of musical heritage. Further, since there are enormous (spatial, geographical, economic, social, political) differences between cities, esp. between cities of the “Global North” and the “Global South”, UMS require theoretical and methodical approaches from different perspectives. Another objective concerns the importance of the historical background of musical phenomena. As a consequence UMS has to include all music throughout space and time, not only the classical one which is (at least in Europe) still the subject of the major and hegemonic discourse on culture and music, or pop music which is predominantly discussed in connection with ‘creative industries’.