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Dealing with the methodological and theoretical issues that can arise from fieldwork, this article primarily sets out to offer an epistemological perspective on the interdisciplinary study of music within social sciences. It starts with the study of the music scene of Marseille’s city center to demonstrate how the construction of a research object – live music through the city – progressively led to the development of an approach that was able to combine various theoretical frameworks, mainly popular music studies, interactionism, urban ecology, and anthropology. Based on an ethnographic investigation and on a research trajectory that focused on the territorial and sensitive dimensions of live music analysis, the resulting analytical configuration challenges the compatibility of these frameworks in order to provide the most accurate account of the cultural, social, and urban issues of La Plaine’s music scene in Marseille.