Engineering great moments: The production of live music – Robert Cluley (2009)

Author: Robert Cluley
Organisation/Affiliation/Publisher: Consumption Markets & Culture, 12(4), pp. 373-388
Date: 2009

The paper investigates the people who organize live music concerts: promoters. In contrast to recent contributions analysing the production of music, I argue that the work done by promoters must be analysed separately from the co‐production of live music. Drawing on interviews with promoters in the UK, I show how promoters invest aesthetic values into their live music products to attract “like‐minded” people and “engineer great moments” for audiences. I also show that promoters do more than create spaces for aesthetic experiences. Much of their work involves accounting for their audience’s aesthetic consumption. I argue, then, that we must recognize that cultural producers both invest aesthetic values into their products and use their everyday interactions with consumers to evaluate the extent to which their products have released those aesthetic values.

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