Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify and compare segments of techno club audiences in Berlin based on their forms of engagements in music-related activities such as audio media and recreational drug use. A central focus is to identify the ways different audience segments attempt to recreate the distinctive socio-aesthetic experience of the electronic dance floor in their everyday life by means of audio media and other arrangements. Another concern is to find out how their techno club experience may change their music listening practices and their lifestyle choices in everyday contexts. The study is based on a mixed-methods design involving quantitative and qualitative methods. In the first phase, after an initial participant observation in Berlin techno clubs, survey data is collected from a sample of n > 300 visitors of five venues where techno is regularly played, measuring sociodemographic details, reception patterns in clubbing contexts, reception patterns in everyday contexts, and lifestyle choices. The second phase involves approximately ten qualitative follow-up interviews with participants selected from the survey respondents based on their media use and reception patterns that will help to interpret and deepen the insights from the survey statistics. It is expected that the study will enrich the study of informal musical expertise, pave new ways in club/drug research, while also providing valuable contribution to the applied fields of product engineering, marketing and design in audio technology, and electronic dance music culture.
Funding is being sought for this research with a starting year from 2020 or later.
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Notes
- 1.
Scene is a widely used concept in popular music studies that addresses the local realizations of musical taste among urban communities, with particular regard to their cultural and spatial contexts (Bennett and Peterson 2004: 8).
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Vitos, B. (2020). Researching Informal Musical Expertise and Mediations of Aesthetic Experiences Among the Berlin Techno Audience: A Postdoctoral Research Proposal. In: Jóri, A., Lücke, M. (eds) TheNewAge of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture. Music Business Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39002-0_6
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