This chapter outlines in four sections the recent development of the study of the cultural industries, the challenges that have shaped it, and what the consequences of the growth and development of the cultural industries are. We begin by positioning the cultural industries within academic debate s discuss how they have been conceptualised. The second section is concerned with the problems of defining the cultural industries. In the third section we examine the range of secondary impacts, and in the fourth section we consider the primary impacts of the cultural industries under five headings: production process, the speed of circulation, intermediation, project based firms, and spatial clustering
