Live Music and Festivals

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the importance of live music, music venues, music festivals and live music promotion in the production and consumption of music. As shown in Chapter 3, music is a complex product which can be enjoyed in a wide range of social situations, from listening to music in one’s own home or car, through enjoying a concert in a large music venue like an opera house or stadium, to spending several days at a music festival attended by over a million people. This chapter therefore begins with an attempt to provide an understanding of some of the historical developments of live music, its main characteristics, and the reasons behind its growing popularity. Music festivals are an important variant of live music, and the chapter also includes a discussion of the nature, form and function of music festivals, their multiple impacts and the marketing issues which they present.

Shaping Forces

As an ‘industry’, the music business can be analysed in terms of its micro-economic structure, conduct and performance (Anand and Peterson, 2000; Power and Hallencreutz, 2007; Asai, 2008), infrastructure (Burkart and McCourt, 2004) and restructuring process (Hardy, 1999). This kind of approach tends to lead us to focus fairly narrowly on the dominant players in the production side of the industry, such as the ‘big three’ record labels in the commercial music market (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group). However, it does not deal so clearly with non-mainstream and publicly funded music (Hesmondhalgh, 1997; Fonarow, 2006), and therefore blinkers our view of the many and various actors and actions that comprise the music market. In addition to the record labels and the management they provide, other actors include regulators, copyright owners, publishers, policy makers, sponsors, promoters, musicians, media, critics, audiences, social activists and researchers. A multitude of different and important relationships exist between these actors, most of which are not yet well understood in the marketing literature. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly introduce the key shaping forces behind the contemporary music industry. It first outlines the economic system of music activities, and then explores the role of cultural policy in the music business. It concludes with a review of technology as a significant driving force behind the change in the music industry.

Music as Product

n order to develop a more holistic and integrated understanding of the relationship between music and the market, and consequently of music production and consumption, it is necessary to examine the notion of music as a product. The very act of exploring the relationship between music, markets and consumption immediately frames music as a ‘product’. In the marketplace, music is ‘produced’ and ‘consumed’ rather than made and heard. But the language and practices of the market and of marketing go far beyond the labelling of music making and listening in this way. They are pervasive and, as such, mediate our everyday engagement with music, regardless of the role we play in the market. The way the quality of music is evaluated is dominated by measures of sales success: songs ‘top the charts’, artists ‘sell out’ stadiums and tours, and recording companies sign ‘the next big thing’ to contracts in the expectation of future sales. Even a particular market can be held up as measure of success: in popular music, many bands, such as the Beatles, have been deemed to be successful only after they have ‘broken America’ by reaching high positions on the US music charts.

Music, Fans and Fandom

Fans and fandom have been studied in a variety of different contexts, from soap operas to novels. Although there is a lot one can learn from studies about the characteristics of fandom and the behaviour of fans in general, research into music fans and fandom remains relatively scarce, with only a handful of works in the fields of popular music, marketing and consumer behaviour. Yet understanding music fans is crucial if one is to comprehend the production and consumption of music. For so many avid music consumers, the pleasures derived from music allows them to make sense of their everyday lives and experiences (Willis, 1990), ‘letting other people know who we are, or would like to be, what group we belong to, or would like to belong to’ (Shankar, 2000: 28). Music consumption is a very rich source of symbolic resources that can be drawn on by music fans to construct their individual and social identities. The purpose of this chapter is to explore fans and fandom in the context of music consumption and production. It builds on the earlier discussion in Chapter 7 on music consumption, where the frame of the music ‘fan’ was introduced. The chapter begins, therefore, with an attempt to provide a historical context for fans and fandom, and then outlines our understanding of fans and their behaviours and motivations. This is followed by an overview of fandom, its intensity and social organization. The chapter concludes with some observations on the material productivity of fans.

Music Consumption

Music can be heard everywhere, infiltrating our everyday existence. Not only does one choose to listen to music across a range of situations, times and spaces; one is also exposed to music in innumerable day-to-day situations – on public transport, from a passing car, through advertisements. Even prior to the technological advances which have revolutionized the way music is acquired, purchased and used (Elberse 2010; Simun 2009), Merriam noted that ‘the importance of music, as judged by the sheer ubiquity of its presence, is enormous... There is probably no other human cultural activity which is so all-pervasive and which reaches into, shapes and often controls so much of human behaviour’ (1964: 218). Technological, social and cultural trends have only served to deepen and diversify the ways in which one listens to, or engages with, music. The marketing and consumer behaviour perspective on music engagement has focused primarily on experiential aspects. Interest in the consumption of music arose on the back of the experiential turn in consumer research, and the associated interest in aesthetic products (e.g. Holbrook and Hirschman 1982). Music is a rich and complex symbolic, social and political product (Larsen et al., 2010), the experience of which can be distinguished from the consumption of other kinds of products. For example, music is the only product which is primarily auditory (Larsen and Lawson, 2010); consumption does not alter its recorded form and it can be consumed actively or passively, with or without ownership, in private and in public (Lacher and Mizerski, 1994). As a result, most of our knowledge about the consumption of music has concentrated on the emotional and aesthetic reasons for listening to music (e.g. Cherian and Jones, 1991; Kellaris and Kent, 1993; Lacher and Mizerski, 1994; North and Hargreaves, 1997; Chien et al., 2007; Lonsdale and North, 2011); the relationship between music and identity, particularly the use of music as a ‘badge of identity’ (e.g. Holbrook, 1986; DeNora, 1999; North and Hargreaves, 1999; Shankar, 2000; Goulding et al., 2002; Negus and Velazquez, 2002; Nuttall, 2009) and the symbolic function of music (Hogg and Banister, 2000; Larsen et al., 2009, 2010). There is a broader question, underlying this body of knowledge, which remains unexamined. That is: What does it mean to frame music engagement as consumption and music listeners as consumers, and what are the consequences of doing so for our understanding of music consumption? As conceptualized by Holbrook and Anand (1990) and Lacher and Mizerski (1994), music consumption is the act of listening to a piece of music. Listening to music is, without a doubt, one of the most significant aspects of the act of consuming music; however, it does not entirely capture all that is involved. For example, talking and reading about music are also important activities in consuming music (Larsen et al., 2009). If, in addition, one also acknowledges that the music product can be an artist, venue and associated paraphernalia (see Chapter 3), then the consumption of the music product must necessarily go beyond listening. Finally, this conceptualization does not help us to identify or understand how the experience of engaging with music differs if one does it as an audience member, as a fan, or as a consumer. Thus, a clearer understanding is needed of what one means by consumption in the context of music.

Musicians

Being a musician can be like playing the Lottery – many try it, almost all enjoy the thrill, but very few win the jackpot. The reasons why someone decides to become a musician can be puzzling: it offers irregular and, on average, rather low income, is a competitive job market with low barriers to entry, entails a need to rely on financial support from others and the necessity to subsidise artistic work by taking jobs outside the music industry, and relies on self-proclaimed music experts who vote with their money and can make or break the musician’s career. And although practically everyone, at some point in their lives, has known at least one person who has claimed to be a musician, still only one out of thousands achieve any financial stability. Of those lucky ones who sign up with a record company, only about 5% break even (Seifert and Hadiba, 2006), and those who manage their own careers often end up spending more time on non-musical activities then they do actually playing music. Most musicians find it impossible to support themselves from their creative work alone. The old economic models tell us that no rationally thinking individual should decide to become a musician (Nagel, 1988).

Marketing and Music

The purpose of this book is to contribute to discussions about the music business from a marketing point of view. Arts marketers have long argued that marketing thinking needs to be substantially adapted to deal with the complexities and particularities of the creative and cultural industries. There are a number of books which take a practical approach to the marketing of music (e.g. Baker’s (2012) Guerilla Music Marketing Online), or provide an overview of the music industry (e.g. Kusek and Leonhard’s (2005) The Future of Music: A Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution and Wikstrom’s (2009) The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud), or comment on economic aspects of the business from the point of view of popular music studies. This book, in contrast, deals with the application of marketing and consumer studies theory to the business. As far as the authors can establish, this has not been attempted before.

Music and Collectivity

The purpose of this chapter is to explore issues of music and collective consumption by using notions such as consumer culture, consumer tribes, brand communities and scenes. This is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of music and community or collectivity. Rather, this chapter focuses specifically on a number of ideas which have potential implications for the analysis, interpretation and understanding of music markets. Part of the contribution of this book is to examine what they buy us in terms of understanding exchange relationships, what their limitations are, and how these limitations might be remedied by combining them with social identity and consumer culture theory. The discussion of brand community builds on the earlier discussion of branding in Chapters 5 and 6. The focus of consumer tribes builds on the discussion in Chapter 7 about music consumption by focusing on collective aspects of consumption. The notion of scenes is one which has emerged within music studies.

Music Brands

Fender Stratocasters, Steinway grand pianos, Marshall amplifiers, the iPod – these are all brands associated with the music business in one way or another. However, in addition to these product brands, there is regular talk within the music industry of pop idols, rock icons, pop stars, jazz greats, rock gods, legendary opera singers, cult bands, guitar heroes, stellar performances, trademark sounds, signature tunes, classic albums, breakthrough singles, rock ‘n’ roll myths, anthemic songs, breakout/ breakthrough recordings, and – of course – hype. These terms have in common the signification of some kind of, or some claim to, cultural distinction. From a marketing point of view, this kind of talk fits very easily into the strategic notion of positioning, as well as the discourse of branding.

Socio Cultural Music Branding

All of the issues in the preceding chapter come under the heading of meaning. Although there is some acknowledgement within the marketing discipline of the notion of brand meanings, relatively little attention has been paid to an underlying theory of cultural meaning. In order to deal with this, it is helpful to turn to cultural studies and a socio-cultural approach to branding. In this chapter, a framework is proposed for how music brands are created. Branding discourse is not good at understanding the meaning of arts and entertainment offerings. Because branding terminology has been largely developed by business academics, practitioners and intermediaries, it is a very blunt instrument in the cultural arena. By framing something or someone as a brand, the speaker invokes a particular way of speaking, a discursive repertoire, or a lens, which focuses on certain features of a phenomenon and pushes others out of focus. In fact, a serious failure of mainstream branding theory as applied by commercial marketers is its failure, relatively speaking, to handle the cultural dimensions of arts brands. It is unhelpful to apply commercial branding terminology to arts and entertainment brands without carefully considering the cultural context, the social interaction between all of the stakeholders, what meanings are generated and understood around the specific musical project or scene, what art-generic conventions apply, and what ideologies and values inform production and consumption practices in the project in question.