In Sync: Distinguishing Taste through the ‘What’ and the ‘How’ of Live Music Consumption

In this study we explore how types of audience engagement (the how) align with the music that is being performed at a concert (the what), with the aim of understanding how meaning is given to this alignment as an aspect of cultural taste. Doing this we add to a growing field of research that emphasizes the importance of the modes of consumption in cultural homology. Concerts provide a unique context for understanding this as they are social activities made up of a multitude of interactions, meaning that engagement is governed by collectively understood rituals. Through interviews with 40 young adults (18–35 years old) attending concerts from three large cultural schemes (highbrow, pop and folk), we combine macro and micro sociological perspectives, using theories from interactionism to understand the preferences for music and the engagement of distinct audiences. Additionally, at each concert a survey (n=1416) was conducted to understand the average social position of each audience. The findings reveal that in concerts from the highbrow scheme consumption is centred around the music, in pop around the artist, and in folk around the atmosphere, and that these aspects are also taken into account when audience members draw symbolic boundaries. The focus and alignment of the what and the how is thus genre dependent and makes up a meaningful part of cultural taste. This study emphasizes the importance of social and interactional aspects to cultural taste, something largely overlooked in studies of distinction.