Many cities consider their live music ecologies to be a valuable asset to urban culture. Many have adopted active live music policies, which is part and parcel of the trend of instrumentalization of urban cultural policies. In this paper we explore the reasons behind the increased political policy attention to live music and we will examine how these policies deal with the changing landscape of live music and events and the trend of festivalisation. We argue that festivalization has become a widely applied policy configuration which has far reaching effects for urban cultures. Its implications can only be understood by looking beyond the instrumental use as an urban growth strategy or as the mere effects of the numerical increase of festivals.