ABSTRACT
This text presents the challenges and first results of an ethnographic investigation in progress into the music fans of today. This study is particularly focused on the theoretical and methodological problems that accompany an investigation of this type if it is not conceived as the only explanation of external determinisms that direct the analysis towards the social origins of the fan or the aesthetic properties of the songs. On the contrary, the objective is to focus on the gestures, objects, media, devices and relationships included in a listening or a playing that are not limited to the forming of a taste already there, but which are redefined in the process of the action, and produce a more uncertain result. What has been constituted thanks to the media and the invention of the listener throughout the slow “discomorphosis” (Hennion et al. 2000) of music in the 20th century, joined today by “internetization,” is that the sheet music of places and centuries past has been transformed into a repertoire that is available here and now for those who want it. The analysis of the music fan and taste need to be placed within this double transformation: that of the music which becomes a repertoire and that of the participant who becomes purchaser-listener-releaser.
