Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual.

If the final contributor to this book, Laura Vroomen, is right, the sociological study of music audiences remains limited by its origins. Over the course of its history, the field has moved from the consideration of audiences as undifferentiated consumers of a culture industry, through an awareness of cultural differences, to the adhesive role of musical style in the constitution of subcultural groupings. The most recent step recognizes that music does not necessarily play an organizing role in such formations, that individuals may inhabit one or more musical scenes. This volume takes that understanding one step further in recognizing that such scenes may not only be physically located, be actual, but that they may operate also in virtual space. The logical outcome of this vectored approach will be the consideration of listeners as individuals, on which basis we might expect a rapprochement with the cognitive psychology of listening as researchers begin to ask the question ‘why’, as a listener, one chooses to respond in a particular way.