Audience

In the most straightforward sense, the audience for a musical performance consists of anyone listening to the music. Musicians typically want to [Page 97]perform for a (preferably appreciative) audience, and professional musicians depend on revenue from audiences for their livelihood; for many musicians, audience feedback and their image of the audience (positive and negative) are central to how they conceive of what they do, and they consider audiences to be collaborators in their performance. But the range of types of audience across different genres and time periods is extremely wide. In fact, the clear distinction between performers and audience does not apply to all forms of music making. A great deal of music making throughout history and across regions of the world has been participatory, and the notion of “audience” does not capture the multiple roles of participants in communal rituals that involve music, for example, the roles of congregants singing along at a religious service or fans singing together at a sporting event.

The audience for music performed live is participating in a one-time-only event, in that a live performance will never be identical twice. In contrast, the audience for recorded music can experience a recording multiple times and in different places, and it can grow and extend into the future for as long as the recordings are available. How audience members can interact with each other varies across live performance situations in ways that alter the audience's individual and collective experience, as well as the audience's potential effects on performing musicians. The individual and collective experience of being an audience for recorded music has yet other dynamics, and these are changing as new forms of music distribution and sharing emerge.

Arguably, the body of social science and psychological research and claims about individual music perception and music listening can be seen as claims about audience, in that individual music listeners are all (solo) audiences. It is, however, unclear how what has been learned in studies of solo music perception and listening extends to how individuals experience music among others in a shared setting, or in the multiple hearings that audiences of recorded music experience and share.