Ubiquitous Audiency: Recorded Music and Attention in Everyday Public-Space Encounters in China

This article puts forwards the idea of ubiquitous audiency to help explain the fleeting and fluid ways in which ostensibly peripheral actors, such as passers-by, help perform musical situations in city streets and similar situations of everyday public-space life. It analyses several instances involving the playback of recordings in regional metropoles in China, especially Kunming, showing how attention is distributed across various actors and sensory modalities. It considers several significances of the direction in which attention is granted, and ultimately advocates the adoption of a broader situational lens to transcend a focus on performer/audience bilateralities in these and other musical encounters.