ABSTRACT
Sociology has a lot to gain in treating the music lover respectfully. The challenge is to explain the music lover's attachments, tastes, ways of acting and pleasures, as an activity in its own right and an elaborate competence, capable of self-criticism – instead of seeing it only as the passive play of social differentiation. Music acts and moves, in relation to other mediations; it transforms those who take possession of it and do something. Records tend to replace concerts. Considering the time devoted to listening to music at home, they serve as a reference for taste in music. To that 'discomorphosis' of the repertoire corresponds an equally important discomorphosis of taste, in its content but also in its forms and formats. Some people rewrite their lives around listening to music or after its discovery. Publishers and music lovers are aware of the new mediation which 'renders' more or less well, depending on the genre, the work and the instruments.
