Is business, for music, a regrettable necessity or a spur to creativity? Are there limits to the influence that economic factors can or should exert on the musical imagination and its product? The eleven chapters here wrestle with these questions from the perspective of different areas of research. The range is wide: from 1700 to the present day; from the opera house to the community centre; from composers, performers, and pedagogues to managers, publishers and lawyers; and from piano miniatures to folk music and pop CDs. If there is a consensus, it is that music serves its own interests best when it harnesses business rather than denying it.