Social Identity and Indie Music: Me or We?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social identity on the consumption of Canadian Indie music. Data collected in 2008 with a self-completion questionnaire comprised of measures of social identification, values, opinion leadership, and consumption behavior for Indie music were used to address four research questions. Strong identifiers with Indie music (SIs), compared to weak identifiers (WIs), were found to have a stronger association of the music with four specific values, to differ in their opinion leadership behavior, and to differ in more than half of the consumption patterns studied. Implications of the findings for musicians and promoters are suggested.