Living Room vs. Concert Hall: Patterns of Music Consumption in Flanders

University of North Carolina Press. 116 South Boundary Street, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288. Tel: 800-848-6224; Tel: 919-966-7449; Fax: 919-962-2704; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://uncpress.unc.edu/

Y

23

Music; Familiarity; Citizen Participation; Educational Attainment; Foreign Countries; Refugees; Family Environment; Surveys; Correlation; Cultural Capital; Art Education; Enrollment; Classical Music; Cognitive Processes; Music Activities

0037-7732

In this article we probe the interplay between public and private music consumption using a large-scale survey of the Flemish population in Belgium. We analyze whether public and private music consumption have different correlates and to what extent there is convergence between the genres that people listen to at home and at concerts. Results show that music consumption is positively related to all indicators of cultural capital--educational attainment, enrolment in arts classes and public participation of the parents. The effects are strongest for high-brow genres such as classical and opera and diminish for middle-brow and low-brow genres such as world/traditional music or pop/rock. Cultural capital is more important for public participation than for private consumption. This suggests that not only information processing capacity is involved when attending concerts, but also social barriers such as familiarity with the rules of decorum and network homophily. Omnivorousness in music consumption is especially situated in the private sphere. (Contains 7 tables and 1 figure.)

As Provided

70

2011

EJ919002