Music: Consumption as identity

Blog Post 2

27.09.2025

A large part of my identity is tied to music in many ways, whether I’m buying records, listening on a drive, attending local shows or creating my own, I am always surrounded and thinking of music. What speaks to me is the personal nature of song writing and the niche communities that are bound by those songs. It is not only an escape for me as a consumer but a business for me as a producer, having cultivated a community for myself which I touch on in my social media blog post.

Music also highlights the tension between consuming and producing. As some scholars argue, the media often promotes producing as superior to consuming. In music, this is considered learning an instrument and writing songs. This concept is addressed by Isabelle de Solier, “both producing objects and acquiring the skills to do so are often central to the models of self-improvement and self-actualization such media promote and are represented as having a higher moral value than consumption in this process.” My personal experience reflects this divide as someone who plays in a band. I often hear that creating is so important and more meaningful than consuming. Yet the consumption is equally central as without it my scene would lose its cultural and social weight. 

Like other art forms, music isn’t without its issues. In the live scene, diversity and representation has been an area with room for improvement. Historically, there always has been issues with class and cultural capital. Bourdieu (1984) argued that cultural consumption is linked to class position, classical music for example being for the educated upper class. However, more recent studies argue that music has shifted in the modern world towards diversity regarding culture consumption (Coulangeon, 2016; Bennett et al., 2009). This on paper makes the arts more inclusive but my experiences lead me to believe that it’s more complex than that. While it’s true inclusivity among culture and class has been largely enhanced, especially in live music, hierarchies regarding taste are still present. Listening to niche genres now represents education while pop consumption is deemed to be “mainstream”, an echo of Bourdieu’s argument surrounding class tailored to today's youth, cultural consumption isn’t about enjoyment but about social positioning. 

There are many rituals that go with consuming music with the most important being, of course, listening to music! Digital streaming services are the easiest way of consuming and finding new music in the modern world. Personally, I have found most of the music that shapes my identity through services such as Spotify and YouTube Music. Muchitsch and Werner (2024) argue that genres will continue to construct identity and difference in the era of music streaming. Their analysis states that, “algorithmic and human processes forming Spotify's genre metadata, playlist curation, and media discourse demarcate, organize, and structure genre in ways that remediate earlier formations of identity and difference in (popular) music cultures”. While I believe my identity has curated my taste, the idea that Spotify dictates the music I discover complicates that belief. I like to think of the songs I find through playlist curation as music I discovered on my own and not predetermined by an algorithm, but unfortunately this is not the case.

Another way streaming services challenge consumers' decisions is through posing ethical questions. Platforms like Spotify typically pay artists 0.003-0.005 cents per stream whereas platforms like Bandcamp allow artists to sell their songs digitally directly to fans at a set price. This separates music streamers into those who value a cheaper listening experience from those who value artists being paid. Bands have also started removing their music from platforms like Spotify in protest for these reasons as well as political associations with the brand.

In conclusion, whenever I buy merch, attend a local show, stream an artist's music or produce my own, I am not only supporting them but partaking in consumer rituals that ties my identity to a scene. 

Thanks for reading!

Sasha Flack, 27.09.2025