The aim of this book is to explore the role of music with regard to social dynamics and processes of cultural inclusion and exclusion through the concept of musical gentrification. Our investigation of these phenomena pays special attention to the expanding role that popular music plays, and has played, in the listening habits of people of all kinds as well as in a variety of educational con-texts, and the function that this expansion may have in creating paths of social mobility or distinction in societies which deem themselves egalitarian. Most of our cases, or chapters, are set in Norway, and can be linked to one particular research project (see more on this below), conducted by an international group of researchers between 2013 and 2017. As such, Norway can be seen to provide a particularly interesting site of investigation with respect to the topics at hand, for reasons that are connected both to the country’s historical development as well as to its contemporary political, economic and socio-cultural situation. Thus, in the following, we will aim to unpack some of this ecology in order to provide the reader with the material needed to form an understanding of the soci-etal backdrop pertaining to most of the examples, occurrences and experiences rendered throughout this book. Since the major part of Norway’s industrial development and consequent economic growth has happened in the period that stretches from the end of World War II until today, this will constitute our era of interest.