Tom Wagner is a Teaching Fellow in Music Performance and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he convenes modules in music performance, entrepreneurship, and the music industries. He is also the Director of Curriculum and Skills Development for the School of Performance and Digital Arts.

Originally from Washington, D.C., he worked for several years as a freelance percussionist, performing with groups such as the New World Symphony, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony, as well as with several popular music outfits. In the U.K., he has toured and recorded with the Balkan and Eastern European music quintet Tatcho Drom. As a university ensemble leader, he has founded and directed the RHUL Balkan Ensemble, Edinburgh Balkan Music Project, and Royal Holloway Percussion Ensemble.

Tom’s primary research interest is in the intersections of social, cultural, and economic value of music in hyper-mediated consumer cultures. His PhD work explored the effects of music and branding on religious experiences in a global evangelical megachurch. His books include Popular Music, Branding, and Consumer Culture in Church: Hillsong in Focus (Routledge 2019) and the edited volumes New Religions, Spiritualities, and Popular Music, co-edited with Christopher Partridge (Bloomsbury Academic forthcoming), The Hillsong Movement Examined: You Call Me Out Upon the Waters, co-edited with Tanya Riches (Palgrave Macmillan 2017), Congregational Music-Making and Community in a Mediated Age, co-edited with Anna Nekola (Routledge 2015), and Christian Congregational Music: Performance, Identity and Experience, co-edited with Monique Ingalls and Carolyn Landau (Routledge 2013).

His current research explores 'artist-centric' business models and discourses in music industry entrepreneurship.​ Recent publications include ‘Fair Trade Music?: Narratives of Ethical Consumerism and the Political Economy of Streaming Music’ in The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press 2020) and ‘A Music Industry for Musicians’, co-written with Giana Eckhardt in The Stanford Social Innovation Review (2022).