ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with an introduction to the general nature of audiences and of cultural consumption. I then consider the various modes of popular music consumption, the social categories associated with these (notably age, gender, and ethnicity), and the variety of social practices through which such consumption occurs. I argue that two factors underpin the consumption of popular music: the role of popular music as a form of cultural capital, with records as media products around which cultural capital can be displayed and shaped, and as a source of audience pleasure. To emphasize these is to privilege the personal and social uses people make of music in their lives, an emphasis that falls within the now dominant paradigm of audience studies. This stresses the active nature of media audiences, while also recognizing that such consumption is, at the same time, shaped by social conditions.
