ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the three main approaches to the analysis of popular music audiences - or consumers - have emerged since the post-1950s expansion of the music industry in Britain. First, there is an approach that understands music audiences as subcultures or club cultures that oppose a dominant, mainstream culture. A second approach has taken a different view of popular music consumption as a feature of everyday practices and localized experiences. Third and more recently, a media studies approach has emerged in the light of technological developments in popular music production, distribution and consumption. Although framed in a distinctly British context, the subcultures approach to popular music audiences built its theoretical foundations on French structuralism. Semiotics is best applied to 'the general' rather than 'the particular', as Barthes demonstrated in his analysis of French cultural forms. Music and clubbing practices create a sense of belonging-rather than subcultural distinction-wherein emotional experiences and lasting memories are collectively consumed and produced.
