ABSTRACT

The chapters in this book draw together, for the first time, complementary perspectives on what it means to be an audience member. Regardless of musical genre, or performance context (music festival, concert hall or converted/adapted spaces), the authors have demonstrated the varied ways in which audiences contribute to live performances. The research portrays a picture of audiences as actively seeking meaningful musical experiences which they try to preserve and share with others. There are a number of factors that determine the extent to which they find such special moments during live performances, and, as we discuss below, it may be these aspects that audiences seek to re-experience at future events – thus we may think of audience behaviour as a cyclical process of experiencing-preserving-revisiting – and this cycle offers an insight into what it means to be an audience member and why this might matter.