ABSTRACT
This chapter on popular music audiences, demonstrates how the primary paradigms and themes of study in this field closely rely on the wider context of analysis of cultural audiences. It focuses on research based upon the theory of cultural legitimacy produced by Pierre Bourdieu to illustrate this reliance, or, inversely, to underline its disjunctions, looking in particular at research on the sociology of taste and of fans. Then the chapter, using data from government studies and others undertaken by actors involved in music broadcasting, illustrates how the issue of popular music audiences is central in cultural policy - established in France on the principle of democratization, that is, the accessibility of creation for the masses-and its analysis. The fact remains that the study of music audiences, and in particular the social construction of musical tastes, has constituted a major element in the critique of the dominant theory in France for the last 30 years, namely the sociology of cultural legitimacy.
