Scale and Periodicities of Recorded Music Consumption: Reconciling Bourdieu's Theory of Taste with Facts

Abstract

Recent data show that middle class consumers have an omnivorous pattern of consumption or tastes, contrary to Bourdieu's predictions of a snob pattern of consumption.To explore the implications of Bourdieu's framework for omnivorousness further, we make use of the anthropological view of consumption to analyse Spaniards' musical tastes and consumption. Results showed a variety of omnivorous patterns of musical consumption associated with upscale consumers: a higher position on the social ladder was linked to more omnivorous tastes and greater use of technologies that free the consumer from fixed periodicities in music consumption. We found that different types (economic, social and cultural) and levels of capital do configure subjects' structural constraints and hence, their tastes in musical genres and the technological media used to consume them. Consequently, the combination of all three types of capital helps to explain the omnivorous consumption (elitist but inclusive as well) of upscale consumers.

The symbolic consumption of music

“…Cherian & Jones, 1991;Chien, Zhou, & Bryant, 2007;Kellaris & Kent, 1993;Lacher & Mizerski, 1994; and to the choice and purchase of music, particularly in the digital era (e.g. Coyle, Gould, Gupta, & Gupta, 2009;Lopez-Sintas, Garcia-Alvarez, & Filimon, 2008;Molteni & Ordanini, 2003). The existing literature does, however, also provide some insights into the music-selfidentity relationship, but it focuses on certain aspects such as: presentation of self to self (e.g.…”

Consequential Strangers and Peripheral Ties: The Importance of Unimportant Relationships

“…In the decades since Granovetter published his paper, thousands of studies have confirmed that weak ties diffuse information. Many of these studies focus on employment (e.g., D. W. Brown & Konrad, 2001; Yakubovich, 2005) but also cover such diverse topics as taste in music (Lopez‐Sintas, Garcia‐Alvarez, & Filimon, 2008), smugglers of political refugees in Europe (van Liempt & Doomernik, 2006), and measles prevention in Nepal (Dugger, 2006).…”

Music access patterns: A social interpretation

“…Coulangeon (2003), Ló pez-Sintas and García-Á lvarez (2002a,b), Savage (2006), Tampubolon (2006, 2008, and Van Eijck (2001) already noted this pattern concerning music tastes, but provided no theoretical explanation. According to our framework, the reason age -as an indicator of life stage -structures music access is because young individuals need to access large volumes of music, irrespective of their social position (see Bonneville-Roussy et al, 2013); meanwhile, position in the social space (reflected by education) structures the means used by individuals to access music (Ló pez-Sintas et al, 2008;Tampubolon, 2008). Bonneville-Roussy et al (2013) and suggest that the importance attributed to music declines with age, and that young people listen to music significantly more often than do middle-aged adults; they also report that people, as they age, listen less to music, but if they do listen, it is mainly to the music of their youth (see Holbrook and Schindler, 1994).…”