Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic
Cultural entrepreneurs, cultural entrepreneurship:
Music producers mobilising and converting
Bourdieu’s alternative capitals
Michael Scott
Department of Geography, School of Environment, Flinders University, Adelaide,
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia
Available online 9 May 2012
Abstract
This article analyses how DIY (‘Do It Yourself’) music producers act in entrepreneurial ways to generate
‘buzz’ from an economically constrained position. Through semi-structured interviews with music
producers in New Zealand, it is suggested a process of capital mobilisation and conversion takes place,
where Bourdieu’s alternative forms of capital offer a use- and exchange-value in creating new cultural goods
that meet identity desires and generate cultural intermediary interest. This adds a new aspect to the sociology
of work in the cultural industries by exploring cultural entreprenuers’ practices as a generalised economy of
exchange. Although only an indicative sensitising framework, capital mobilisation and conversion may be
useful for investigating the practices of cultural entrepreneurs in other sectors of the new cultural economy.
# 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Recent cultural industries scholarship has turned to labour. Notable among this research are
accounts of work experiences in: flexibilised movie and television production (Christopher, 2008;
Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2009); independent fashion design (McRobbie, 2008; Molloy and
Larner, 2010); fashion modelling (Entwistle, 2002); the visual arts (Taylor and Littleton, 2008);
theatre acting (Eikhof and Haunschild, 2006); and recorded music production (Lingo and
O’Mahoney, 2010). One prominent strand of this research has highlighted the endemic features of
creative labour: precarious employment, low and sometimes non-existent wages, emotional labour,
gendered constraints, dense social networks, identity investments, intense competition leading to
E-mail address: michael.scott@flinders.edu.au.
0304-422X/$ – see front matter # 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2012.03.002
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M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
high failure rates (and shame), and multiple-job holding to sustain both livelihoods and cultural
production (Eikhof and Haunschild, 2006; Ellmeier, 2003; Entwistle, 2002; Gill and Pratt, 2008;
Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011; Jones, 2003; Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999; McRobbie, 2008;
Menger, 1999; Murdock, 2003; Tams, 2002). This strand also observes the enduring tensions
between artistic identity construction that pleasurably blurs work and leisure (Neff et al., 2005),
leading to self-exploitation and psychological burdens (Gill and Pratt, 2008). Other researchers
have sought to explain how creative careers are assembled by jazz musicians (Pinheiro and Dowd,
2009), writers (Anheier et al., 1995), and popular musicians (Zwaan et al., 2009).
This article augments this literature on the conditions under which cultural producers operate
in two ways. First, the following outlines how aspiring artists can be thought of as ‘cultural
entrepreneurs’. It is suggested cultural entrepreneurs are a social group comprising mostly young
people whose primary life goal is to build an artistic career. Their common characteristic is that
they make cultural products while undertaking other paid work, within and outside the cultural
sector, for they have yet to secure an income from their artistic production. Second, and due to
these conditions, Ellmeier (2003, p. 11) observes that cultural entrepreneurship is a practice that
occurs ‘‘sans capital’’. Taking this relative economic capital scarcity as an entry point, the
following then examines how Bourdieu’s alternative forms of capital—social, cultural, and
symbolic—are readily available resources to be mobilised and converted in the struggle to build a
career. As Bourdieu (1997a, p. 54) states, ‘‘the real logic of the functioning of capital [is the]
conversion from one type to another’’. For cultural entrepreneurs, the converting of the
alternative forms into cultural intermediary interest (such as when music industry gatekeepers at
record labels, publishing houses, or management firms offer contracts) and economic capital is
necessary to sustain career aspirations. Although Bourdieu is an omnipresent theorist in studies
of cultural production and consumption (Dowd et al., 2009; Holt, 1997; Prieur et al., 2008) and
informs work on artists’ career building (Anheier et al., 1995; Craig and Dubois, 2010; Pinheiro
and Dowd, 2009), the following adopts a different approach. Here, Bourdieu is used to interpret
cultural entrepreneurs’ general economy of practices. Therefore, the focus is on the ongoing and
adept use of capitals necessary to demonstrate Becker’s (1982, p. 14) ‘rare powers’ as an artist.
Independent ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) music producers are ideal-typical cultural entrepreneurs
and, thus, provide the empirical basis for this analysis. DIY music producers include those who
create and perform music, as well as self-manage the construction of a music industry career
(Harrison, 2009; Hesmondhalgh, 1998; Moore, 2007)—a practice that can be described in the
following way. Aspiring music producers who seek to establish a career in this competitive
industry need to produce products and events that go beyond their abilities and resources as artists
and managers. Moreover, the production of these cultural goods and events are necessary to gain
cultural intermediaries’ attention as these prove ability and signal seriousness. As these DIY
producers lack sufficient economic capital to pay professionals to produce complex products
(recordings, videos, promotional material) and events (live performances, tours), they initiate
contact with established or unestablished cultural entrepreneurs who have requisite skills and
resources—designers, video makers, neophyte managers and sound engineers, for example.
Thus, the initial recordings and performances necessary for image building and audience
construction are achieved, on the whole, without payment. Due to similar standing in the
industry, these cultural entrepreneurs all work for exposure, experience, friendship or interest.
Some could charge fees, but do not; and most cannot, as they are not sufficiently established to do
so. What motivates these homologous cultural entrepreneurs to engage in productive activities
for minimal or limited financial return is either the promise of exposure or the opportunity to
engage in activities that are in line with their career aspirations and identities. These favours are
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
239
intrinsically interesting and rewarding at an artistic level—affording the opportunity to help
fellow artists, which may initiate what may be a fruitful and enduring relationship.
Placing such practices in a Bourdieuian framework is revealing. DIY music producers operate
in a field of music production where cultural intermediaries facilitate entry to larger markets.
This requires gaining cultural intermediaries’ interest—who then supply economic capital for
production and promotion, and mobilise social contacts to enable wider recognition. By
mobilising others with social, cultural and symbolic capital into the co-production of recordings,
tours, and videos, DIY music producers attempt to build ‘buzz’ that, in turn, presents them as
‘subjects of value’ (Skeggs, 2004). That is, it is through these ostensibly ‘free’ capital
mobilisations that music producers come to present themselves as ready and willing to be sold
and re-sold in rapidly changing, fashion driven markets (Skeggs, 2004, p. 73; Zwaan and ter
Bogt, 2009). From this broader perspective, it is the convertibility of the types of capital that
transforms shoestring music production into potential market returns and symbolic rewards
(Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011, p. 64). This evinces two logics present in the alternative forms
of capital and the general economy of DIY production. The immediate capital mobilisation forms
a use-value, being able to meet the ideal-expressive and emotional needs of cultural
entrepreneurs. Yet, once a cultural product is formed, it also carries a latent exchange-value
(Skeggs, 2004). Songs, recordings, successful performances, promotional videos, online sales,
and website hits all serve as sources of recognition to be brought into cultural intermediaries’
gaze. Moreover, the success this cultural product generates can then be appropriated by coproducing cultural entrepreneurs into their own career projects.
This interpretation of cultural entrepreneurs and cultural entrepreneurship is developed across
five sections. First, the research methodology is described. Second, economic and sociological
notions of entrepreneurship are explored in order to locate contemporary cultural entrepreneurs.
Third, Bourdieu’s concepts of field and alternative forms of capital are discussed. Here attention
is directed to the enduring role of cultural intermediaries and ‘buzz’ in the field of music
production and how the alternative forms of capital are readily available resources for cultural
entrepreneurs. Section four presents qualitative empirical material to illustrate some forms of
capital mobilisation and conversion by cultural entrepreneurs. In the conclusion, the limitations
and implications of this interpretation of cultural entrepreneurship are considered.
2. Methods
As Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2009) observe, qualitative studies of ‘creative labour’ have
been surprisingly deficient, while Zwaan et al. (2009) note that empirical research on pop
musicians’ contemporary career development remains scarce. This article addresses elements of
this research gap by drawing on qualitative material from music producers and music industry
workers in New Zealand.
New Zealand is a small South Pacific nation with a population of 4.4 million, and it occupies a
semi-peripheral position in the global economy. It can be considered a developed nation,
although it remains heavily reliant on the agricultural sector to earn export income. Between
1999 and 2008, Helen Clarke’s centre left Labour government allocated $NZ86.8 million to
stimulate the nation’s cultural sector—following the globally celebrated work of boosters such as
Richard Florida (2002). Labour’s policies had significant impact on the domestic music industry
through a range of inventive public private partnerships closely aligned to existing domestic and
international cultural intermediaries (Scott, 2008; Scott and Craig, 2012). By 2005, music made
by New Zealand nationals came to account for a record 20.8 per cent of music played on domestic
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commercial radio—a figure that continues into 2011. In contrast, domestic airplay figures were a
mere 2.6 per cent in 1995. Consequently domestic artist royalty payments from airplay more than
doubled from $7 million in 2000 to $16.5 million in 2005. Sales boomed too. In the face of
withering global demand for compact discs domestic artists’ sales almost doubled from 5.8 per
cent in 2000 to 11.5 per cent of the local market in 2005, reaching 20 per cent in 2010 (New
Zealand Music Industry Commission, 2010, p. 2). Now over the summer months New Zealand
artists fill a burgeoning festival circuit with many fitting these performances into their
international touring schedule. Furthermore, there is growing recognition from state agencies
that increasing numbers of young people are seeking to build careers in the music industry—
either as musicians or in support roles.
One of this study’s aims was to investigate how music producers responded to these state
supports and, by extension, the logic of accessing cultural intermediaries. Important among the
primary qualitative empirical materials informing this analysis were recorded in-depth, semistructured interviews lasting between one and two hours with 25 information-rich persons active
in the music industry. The interviews were conducted in 2006. Of these respondents, 14 had
direct experience in DIY music production. Overall, they were an educated group with 16 having
degree level qualifications in the Arts or Commerce, while 3 had diplomas in music performance
and sound recording. Many possessed extensive industry experience as independent label
owners, promoters, record company staff, state music agency staff, or at college radio (see Table
A1 in Appendix A). This breadth and depth of knowledge of the music industry meant all
participants were qualified in commenting upon the practices of building music careers. It can
also be observed that these informants had an illusio1 in creating a music industry career and that
their habitus2—an internalised and durable generative cognitive schema—allowed for the
improvised performance of the field’s requirements (Bourdieu, 1984). That is, all of the
participants had a broadly middle-class habitus that was evinced by their qualifications, capacity
to articulate music industry experiences, and ability to draw on extended family resources. In
addition, the informants represented relevant culture and leisure occupations from the Australian
and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification: music performers, music composers, music
publishers, and record companies (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000).
These informants were located in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, and Wellington, the
nation’s capital. Both are urban centres with a concentration of cultural industries infrastructure
and audiences. To generate interview subjects, the ‘snowballing’ method of purposive sampling
was used to access agents who possess specific, relevant, and illuminating experiences of DIY
music production and the music industry (Patton, 2002, p. 40). The snowballing sampling method
was practical as the music industry is often an insular field, arguably due to the sensitive nature of
sales, incomes, and reputations. These interviews were then analysed using the themes of career
aims, experiences in the music industry, and strategies for forging a creative career. Anonymous
1
Bourdieu (1990b, p. 195) calls an individual’s interest and willingness to enter a field an ‘illusio’: ‘‘the sense of
investment in the game’’. A cultural entrepreneur’s illusio in producing popular music—with all its heavily stacked
commercial odds—compels them to invest financially and emotionally in the field, as well as in its stakes and its contests.
2
Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus seeks to explain how the subjective dispositions that orient individuals to the social
world are an embodiment of their cultural and historical social life. Thus, an individual’s habitus can be understood as a
set of more or less durable cognitive schemas acquired through socialisation in the family and schooling and that are
conditioned by his or her (classed, ethnic, religious, spatial, temporal, gendered) experiences. Bourdieu (1990a, p. 53)
sees the habitus, then, as ‘‘an acquired system of generative schemas’’; beliefs that then orient an individual’s sense of
what is possible and impossible in the social world.
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
241
excerpts are used below to illustrate capital mobilisation and conversion practices. Secondary
sources included official reports, media accounts, and participant observations at concerts,
performances, and state organised workshops: notably the 2005 Warrant of Fitness seminar series
that brought together elite cultural intermediaries to share their insights into the workings of the
global music industry.
As the research focus was on the practice of music production, the interview method was
appropriate for it allowed respondents to reflect upon and discuss what they did to build a career.
Furthermore, as many of these practices occur in a grey economy which official quantitative data
does not accurately record (Castells and Portes, 1989), the interview method thus allowed for
exploratory research into the activities that underpin official music statistics. Due to the sample
size, the intention is not to map the distributions of cultural entrepreneurs but to explicate a
general process: how aspiring DIY music producers come to act in entrepreneurial ways with
limited holdings of economic capital (Becker, 1998, p. 87).
3. Cultural entrepreneurs: entrepreneurship sans economical capital
How can DIY cultural producers, such as musicians, be conceptualised as cultural
entrepreneurs? The keyword entrepreneur derives from the French term entreprende denoting ‘to
undertake’. Orthodox economics has sought to account for the privileged and key role of the
entrepreneur in capitalism by narrating this agent as the masculine, active, dynamic and
courageous figure of liberal bourgeois culture. They are variously interpreted as: managers of
uncertainty and risk; co-ordinators, leaders, industrial superintendents, and decision makers
within a firm; market or industrial innovators; a person who supplies financial capital; or a
contractor (Grebel, 2004, p. 4). For Schumpeter (Swedberg, 1991, p. 36), the entrepreneur is a
central figure in capitalism for they create economic growth through innovative factor
combinations that produce new goods, technological innovations and markets. In turn, this
activity attracts, ‘swarmlike’, new entrepreneurs to these rapidly expanding domains. Related to
these conceptualisations, the orthodox economic sociology literature understands the
entrepreneurial agent as a powerful node in social networks of trust and reciprocity underpinning
market exchange (Granovetter, 1985; Swedberg, 2003). Overall, to behave in an entrepreneurial
manner is to suggest some kind of endeavour directed towards financial gain (Weber, 1968, p.
109). Many activities undertaken by music producers could be interpreted through these frames.
For example, the development of musical micro-enterprises (bands, solo careers, record labels)
and products (songs) involves a range of risks, investments, contracts, and the co-ordination of
social networks.
Also useful in understanding cultural entrepreneur is how the entrepreneur concept has
travelled from economics to sociology albeit (although not always) in a more critical usage (Fine,
2001). In a significant departure from economic understandings, this strand of contemporary
social theory draws on Foucault’s (1991) notion of governmentality to trace how neo-liberalism’s
discursive emphasis on markets and ‘active’ individualism entwine to elicit entrepreneurial
subjectivities. Du Gay (1996) calls this the ‘enterprising self’ and refers to the application of
entrepreneurial outlooks to the problems of everyday life. Personal attributes ascribed to
entrepreneurial actors include: a flexible, resilient, and adaptable disposition; the willingness to
take risks in seeking material gain; and to be an entrepreneur of the self by maximising health,
wealth, and well-being (Skeggs, 2004, pp. 73–77).
Emerging at the intersections of economics, sociology, and cultural industries research, there
appears to be little consensus on either the nomenclature or activities of cultural industry
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entrepreneurs. Using a textual analysis of the classical sociological literature, Swedberg (2006, p.
260; emphasis in the original) concludes, ‘‘Cultural entrepreneurship, as I see it, may therefore be
defined as the carrying out of a novel combination that results in something new and appreciated
in the cultural sphere’’. Alternatively, for institutionalists such as DiMaggio (1982), cultural
capitalists are elite entrepreneurs who brought together new fields or new logics within the fields
to build status demarcations through high culture. Recent work exploring contemporary cultural
entrepreneurial behaviour has used the term cultural entrepreneur (Leadbeater and Oakley,
1999), the neologism culturpreneur (Lange, 2009), or art-entrepreneur (Aggestam, 2007) in an
attempt to capture the complex mix of creativity and commerce with which these individuals
engage. Notably, cultural entrepreneurs’ motivations cannot be reduced to economic interest.
With these readings in mind, ‘cultural entrepreneur’ is used here as a synecdoche for the
(mostly) young neo-bohemian (Lloyd, 2002) person operating in freelance mode at the
interstices of the flexible labour market (within and outside the creative industries) and selfdriven cultural production. That is, they may not be employed directly in the cultural industries
per se, but they continue to produce cultural goods with or without pay. A young creative
industries worker candidly summarises these conditions when stating ‘everyone in Auckland is a
slash something—waitress slash DJ’ (Smith and Nippert, 2005). As aspiring creative workers
often combine various jobs, this feature leads to a slash-mark bisecting their working identity:
café worker/songwriter, courier/drummer, colour consultant/painter, administrator/jewellery
designer, and so on. Moreover, such combinations of flexible employment and creative work are
not limited to artists at low levels of success, as Luke Budda of New Zealand’s platinum selling
Phoenix Foundation notes with candour: ‘I work in a café. . .imagine that, a musician working in
a café!’ (McLennan, 2008, p. 26). As a social group, these cultural entrepreneurs constitute the
throng of small producers who autonomously bear the ‘‘high costs of origination’’, which often
occurs through ‘‘repeated performance and image building’’ (Toynbee, 2000, p. 16). To manage
the conditions of oversupply, uncertain demand and socially defined evaluation criteria (Foster
et al., 2011, p. 248), Ellmeier (2003, p. 26) characterises the cultural entrepreneur as ‘‘on
average. . .[a] multi-skilled, flexible person, psychologically resilient, independent, single,
unattached to a particular location who jumps at whatever opportunity there is to be had in the
field of art, music, or the media’’. Although such a description neatly frames the cultural
entrepreneur as the ‘perfectly’ mobile worker of neo-classical labour market theory, I suggest the
cultural entrepreneur concept should draw more closely on sociological understandings of the
enterprising self; one who pursues artistic interests in negotiation with the necessity of
reproducing labour power.
From this perspective, cultural entrepreneurship can be demarcated on one vital dimension
from economic conceptualisations. Ellmeier (2003, p. 11) perceptively observes cultural
entrepreneurs operate ‘‘sans capital’’. As a DIY music producer comments: ‘‘financially cash is
never an option because that is what we need most’’ (Sara, Interview, 2006). While another
reiterates: ‘‘If you don’t have any money, you’re going to have a hard go’’ (Steve, Interview,
2006). Further underscoring the limitations imposed by economic capital scarcity is how youth
receive a lower market income and hold fewer material assets (Richardson and Miller-Lewis,
2002). Emerging cultural entrepreneurs are nevertheless relatively sans economic capital. For
those who have converted their talent into the market, economic capital can be generated from
multiple sources: live performance fees, direct sales of recordings at gigs and online, through
merchandise, and copyright exploitation or sponsoring. These income sources are sometimes
available on a small scale and may add up to significant portions of the musician’s income. Yet,
this income is often intermittent and may only retire debt from earlier phases of origination or
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
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serve to facilitate a new round of projects to sustain the presentation of the cultural entrepreneur
as a ‘subject of value’. Other sources of economic capital derive from familial relations, personal
savings, and private loans—with the latter arguably prevalent during the credit-fuelled boom of
the 2000s. Therefore, cultural entrepreneurs can access economic capital—but mostly at levels
that only facilitate ongoing shoestring production. Illustrating that economic capital is available
but at times inefficiently utilised in a competitive market, a DIY music producer performing in
three small-scale rock bands while working in a warehouse states:
We’ve paid for everything ourselves out of our own pockets. At one point we all took out
five grand loans each to pay for like our EP, video and tour. It’s pretty hard. . .I’ve had a
whole bunch of other loans. We’re pretty useless with money. (Rod, Interview, 2006)
Therefore, the term ‘cultural entrepreneur’ can be understood as a subjectivity combining
three elements. First, these individuals create new cultural products such as songs, recordings,
videos and performances requiring nuanced understandings of current cultural forms. Second,
they are oriented towards accessing opportunities to produce an identity and social trajectory as a
‘new taste maker’ (Bourdieu, 1984). Third, they are ‘entrepreneurs’ because they have to find
innovative ways of doing so without recourse to significant holdings of economic capital due to
their labour market position. This final feature directs attention to the field in which they operate
and the alternative resources upon which they can draw.
4. The field of music production and the alternative forms of capital
Bourdieu offers researchers a wide-ranging conceptual architecture through which to analyse
social practices. The following applies fields and alternative forms of capital as interrelated
sensitising components to cultural entrepreneurs’ practices. For Bourdieu fields operate at the
meso-scale by disaggregating social space into specific social spheres—fields—in order to
analyse the inter-relations between actors, organisations, and institutions within them. As
domains of activity, fields function as a space for a game where social struggles based on interests
are played out, and wherein the rewards from playing in the field make the game worth playing.
Thus, a given field allows freedom to act albeit within constraints and conventions that need to be
followed (Swedberg, 2011, p. 74).
Although there are multiple interlacing fields of cultural production—media, music,
journalism, fine art, literature, all of which are embedded in fields of class and power relations
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 38)—these are primarily structured by two dominant poles. First, the
autonomous pole is where the economic world is reversed: economic failure is a sign of artistic
success. This ‘art for arts sake’ pole is oriented to a limited audience and where the central
struggle is over artists’ long-term cultural consecration. Second, the heteronymous pole is the
prevailing pole, as it is structured by economic logics: best sellers, sell-out performances,
prestigious awards, and the star phenomenon (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 38). However, it is increasingly
recognised that, in the contemporary field of music production, the sharp distinctions between
these poles have withered. Negus and Pickering (2004) claim that artistic and commercial logics
are interpenetrated to such an extent they are now indistinguishable.
It is at these merging of poles of music production that the cultural entrepreneurial subject comes
into relations with cultural intermediaries. Despite claims of their declining significance in the
fashion design industry (Molloy and Larner, 2010), cultural intermediaries remain an important
convention in the field of music production. As Swedberg (2011) observes, the logics of fields are
resistant to change—and in the music business marketable talent still needs to be sourced, assessed
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and introduced to consumers. This is because music production illustrates Meige’s (1989, pp. 133–
159) publishing logic, whereby a catalogue of repertoire allows occasional best sellers to offset less
commercially successful artists on a record label, publisher, or management roster. Cultural
intermediaries, then, are gatekeepers, brokers and allocators of talent (Gibson, 2003, p. 205) who
select artists from the massed talent pool for the chance, not the guarantee, of becoming a celebrated
artist (Caves, 2000). In the field of music production, cultural intermediaries include managers,
lawyers, state funding agencies, broadcasters, publishers, booking agencies, journalists, record
label employees or owners, and audio producers who operate at local, national and global scales
(Foster et al., 2011; Lingo and O’Mahoney, 2010; Negus, 2002; Zwaan et al., 2009). Importantly for
DIY music producers, cultural intermediaries enable the transition towards market opportunities
through their holding of the economic capital necessary to fund recordings, tours and promotional
material such as videos. Cultural intermediaries also possess the social contacts and negotiation
skills—which can leverage artists into profile enhancing performances, showcases, tours,
influential media endorsements, and film, advert, computer game placements. Therefore,
connecting with these super connectors remains a defining feature of the field.
Emerging from the field’s structural and cultural logics is the cultural entrepreneur’s ability to
generate excitement and enthusiasm among cultural intermediaries; what industry parlance calls
‘buzz’ (Caves, 2000, p. 173). Although there is no secure definition of ‘buzz’, it can be thought of
as the infectious power of rumours and recommendations circulating through dense cultural
intermediary networks. Cultural entrepreneurship, then, becomes further contextualised as the
practice of self-constructing and then manipulating the mythical powers of ‘buzz’ in multiple
settings to form an audience, to stimulate consumption, and to generate marketable values. In
many respects, ‘buzz’ is the presentation of a cultural entrepreneur’s ‘potential’; their unrealised
capacity to be integrated into circuits of flexible accumulation (Adkins, 2008; Sennett, 2006).
And with the costs of artist development increasingly ‘shedded’ to outside the market (Harvey,
2005, p. 160), a marketing manager at a major label describes how the ‘buzz’ of a self-generated
audience can be appropriated:
We are on about communities and artists, and how they get together a community of
fans. . .all we want to do is jump on that band wagon and say, ‘‘Yeah, cool, great’’—how
can we make money out of this? (Helen, Interview, 2006)
To construct ‘buzz’ relatively sans economic capital, cultural entrepreneurs draw on different
combinations of social, cultural, symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1997a; Swedberg, 2011, p. 78). For
Bourdieu (1997a, p. 46), capitals are unevenly distributed relational assets of accumulated power
resources endowing actors with field-circumscribed agency. Social capital comprises durable
social contacts and networks between actors that provide recognition and the benefits of shared
group resources (Bourdieu, 1985, p. 248, 1997a, p. 51). Social capital also establishes obligations
within social groups through tacit membership rules, shared accountabilities, and rights based
upon trusted reciprocity (Somers, 2005, pp. 16–17). Power and Scott (2004, p. 6) underscore the
importance of social capital in the cultural industries, and they stress it is necessary for accessing
‘‘collaborators, customers and employees’’. Thus, social capital is the primary form for cultural
entrepreneurs—as one music producer recounts:
First of all, you need contacts and communication. If you know the right people at the right
time, then you can get whatever you want. But that is not always easy if the band is
unknown because the industry is not very supportive of new acts—mainly because there
are too many. (Lachlan, Interview, 2006)
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
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Social capital has little value if the cultural entrepreneur lacks cultural capital. In its embodied
form, cultural capital includes dispositions or deportments—such as ways of speaking and acting
that are manifestation of historically transmitted cultural knowledge (Bourdieu, 1997a, p. 47).
This embodied form includes ‘self-improvement’—such as musical skills that cannot be done
‘‘second hand’’ or through instantaneous transmission (Bourdieu, 1997a, p. 48). These are what
one music producer calls ‘‘those skills you’ve been working on all your bloody life’’ that are
‘‘going to do the job’’ (Manu, Interview, 2006). As Portes (1998, p. 6) observes, in Bourdieu’s
lexicon, this embodied form is the closest equivalent to orthodox human capital—understood as
cognitive knowledge leading to increased productivity (Becker, 1964; Schultz, 1961). In the
present case, embodied cultural capital also includes a cultivated image (tattoos and piercing,
hairstyles, fashion clothing) that is constantly assessed by gatekeepers and audiences alike for
aligning with genre expectations, conventions and fashions (Thornton, 1997). Counterintuitively, for an industry nominally based on aural pleasures embodied cultural capital is
significant for ‘‘the first thing that pops out of an A&R rep’s mouth at meetings is ‘what do they
look like?’’’3 In the objectified state, cultural capital exists ‘‘in material objects and media, such
as writings, paintings, monuments, instruments, etc.’’ (Bourdieu, 1997a, p. 50). For music
producers, this form may include self-released recordings, videos, and musical equipment.
Institutionalised cultural capital—educational credentials—is perhaps the least significant form
in cultural production. This is a field where economic success does not depend entirely upon
credentials but rather the mastery of relatively unregulated cultural pretension (Swartz, 1997, p.
160). Nevertheless, education can play a role in shaping cultural entrepreneurs’ habitus and, thus,
their understanding of the field’s logics. Finally, symbolic capital denotes distinctions such as
accumulated prestige, reputation, honour and fame (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 230). For Bourdieu
(1996, p. 142), it is the dominant alternative form for it transmutes into ‘‘a veritable credit’’ able
to be converted into long term economic profits. Relevant forms of symbolic capital for music
producers include awards, the prestige and status of chart placements, sales of recordings,
website hits, effusive media reviews, winning talent competitions, commercially successful
tours, public endorsements by established artists, and performances at prestigious venues or
events. Hesmondhalgh (2006, p. 215) underscores symbolic capital’s significance in the field of
music production, as cultural entrepreneurs negotiate the tension between low levels of economic
capital and ‘‘very high levels of field specific symbolic capital’’. Therefore, this field-specific
symbolic capital is synonymous with ‘buzz’, for it creates potential convertibility into economic
capital. For example:
It makes it a hell of a lot easier if your band has a little bit of success without any other
support, people then realise that it’s great band, going, ‘‘Oh yeah, we remember the
name’’. My band’s music is so out there [recognised by others] that it is easier now
because people love us and give us more support than I experienced in the past. . .having
[won a talent quest] people say, ‘‘Oh wow, they must be good’’. So all these incidents
give people a sense of our talent. . .that’s what I realised when I got phone calls back
from sponsors saying, ‘‘Oh yeah, we would be interested’’ [in co-funding a tour]. (Seb,
Interview, 2006)
3
Kirk Harding (Executive Vice President of Street Records Corporation) observed this at the 2005 Warrant of Fitness
seminar.
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M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
5. Cultural entrepreneurship as the practice of capital mobilisation and conversion
Having outlined the cultural entrepreneurial subject, the contemporary field of music
production and the alternative forms of capital, this section explores how cultural entrepreneurs
mobilise and convert capitals. Common sense descriptions of DIY music production frequently
recount the use of ‘favours’. A New Zealand Music Industry Development Group (2004, p. 21)
report acknowledges how music production regularly occurs without recourse to economic
capital: ‘‘The huge amount of ‘favours’ carried out by musicians, engineers, video directors and
other associated industry players who undertake work for little or no remuneration, purely for
the love of music or the artists they choose to help’’. Such ‘favours’ are a durable ‘semiautomatic’ convention, for the easiest thing to do is what everyone knows is the way everyone
already knows (Becker, 1982, p. 204). As an independent label industry group representative
recounts:
In terms of getting a record out or just getting it off the ground? Hard work and favours: you
get a mate to produce it. If you do get one of those $5000 [video] grants from [state agency]
New Zealand on Air—even that is not very much—you still have to call in a lot of favours
to get anything done. You get your mates from film school to help you out. (Diane,
Interview, 2006)
Appealing as it may be to leave cultural entrepreneurial practices with these anodyne
descriptions, it would be sociologically remiss to reaffirm common sense discourses of music
production as undertaken ‘purely for the love of music’, especially considering the intense
competitions induced by fields of cultural production. Bourdieu therefore directs us to the
mobilisation, appropriation, and conversion of different composites of alternative capitals in
constructing ‘buzz’. Here Beverley Skeggs (2004) usefully synthesises Bourdieu with classical
political economy to distinguish between the use-value and exchange-value of alternative
capitals. This conceptualisation is particularly relevant for understanding how capitals are
deployed by cultural entrepreneurs. She argues that a defining feature of contemporary
capitalism is how social, cultural and symbolic capitals have a use-value in building a person’s
identity and an exchange-value in systems of economic and symbolic exchange. As such, capitals
emerge as both a property of the individual and a mediator in their relations with the field. Skeggs
suggests that through the extension of ownership beyond economic goods to the individualised
(and entrepreneurial) self, alternative capitals can be used as a resource to increase a person’s
exchange-value: ‘‘becoming an object of exchange the moment another person becomes
interested in it/them’’ (Skeggs, 2004, p. 11). Thus Skeggs (2004, p. 158) illuminates how
recognition produced in the field can be a potential ‘‘resource—in propertising of the self’’, and
that those who can effectively mobilise and convert capitals have their exchange-value
consolidated.
Therefore, the use-value of capitals mobilised through ‘favours’ is always present in DIY
production. Of more interest is how cultural entrepreneurs generate exchange-value through
‘favours’ and how these, in turn, construct field-specific symbolic capital, which is then
attached to the self through objects—in our case: the ability to produce innovative songs, an
audience, and a ‘buzz’. Through the alternative capitals mobilised and then sunk into products,
cultural entrepreneurs tacitly convert—by association—others’ social, cultural, and symbolic
capital into a latent form of exchange-value for the self or group. Importantly, as these
mobilisations often occur without significant cash payment, they appear as a temporal strategy
directed towards constructing future exchange-values that are necessary to appear as a ‘subject
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
247
of value’. Thus, in the exchange-value logic of cultural entrepreneurship, it is not the use-value
of the cultural commodity per se that is primary—be that the poster, website hits, video, live
performance, or recording. Rather, for all contributors to the product or event, it is the potential
symbolic capital these mobilisations can generate that opens avenues to transmute the sunken
alternative capitals into economic capital or new accumulations of symbolic capital.
Conceptually, there exists multiple capital mobilisation and conversion strategies, which are
field-conditioned and improvised practices. This core feature of creative entrepreneurship is
illustrated by three instructive cases.
Gerti is a music producer managing two bands that are seeking to emerge into mainstream
success by accessing state funding and ultimately private sector deals. At the time of the interview,
her acts—both playing a style of melodic hard rock—had gained some recognition: national tours,
prestigious support slots, band competition awards, and low rotate commercial radio airplay. Her
working life combined the self-exploitative double shift of a day job as a service worker in a DVD
distribution firm with artist management. She recalls how during evenings and weekends ‘‘a lot of
time is spent with meetings, concerts of your bands, organising them, photo shoots: if it’s happening
it’s always at the weekends’’ (Gerti, Interview, 2006). Like most cultural entrepreneurs, every
opportunity is tacitly assessed in relation to the potential capitals it can generate. She recounts,
‘‘Sometimes I spend my private time at a concert of somebody else’s band or I go to a party where I
know there might be important people around. You always have to network. Always. . .’’ Such
social capital may convert into production opportunities:
A lot of times you get asked to do something for free because you have the exposure which
is fine if you weight it up. But there are far too many things— y’know, I’m really over
hearing it’s good promotion. Anyway we just did a surf DVD for an Australian TV channel
[Where music is synched to surfing footage]. There is no money because the guy does it
completely by himself. So we don’t get any money but it means somebody might listen to
the music, someone in Australia who might want to buy the album: it might be two people,
it might be ten. (Gerti, Interview, 2006)
In capital mobilisation terms, such use of ‘favours’ is actually a confluent combination of
capitals. Social capital creates opportunities for the music producer to convert cultural capital
manifest in recordings into symbolic and economic capital. The accrual of symbolic capital
stems from an ‘international release’ and exposure to cultural intermediaries looking to profit
from surfing subculture. In turn, although this aspect is somewhat small scale it is understood,
there is the possibility (however slight) of transmuting alternative capitals into sales. For the
filmmaker, the cultural capital of the band’s grinding, ostinato riffs provides a use-value as a
soundtrack that demonstrates an affinity with surfing subculture. But more importantly, through
this mobilisation, the filmmaker can use the DVD as a maker of his potential exchange-value—
when consecrated through broadcast and sales—which may generate future (paying?)
opportunities in the field of film production.
Jerry is a guitarist and songwriter seeking to access (and since the interview, has achieved)
state support and international private sector deals. At the time of the interview, his band had
gained some low rotation airplay on commercial radio, had supported internationally recognised
bands, and had came second in an established nationwide talent contest. The group hold
ambitions similar to many music producers, wanting to: ‘‘play overseas. . .we want things to
happen rather than wait around in New Zealand’’ (Jerry, Interview, 2006). His cultural
entrepreneurial practices work through a number of commonly interwoven ways, including DIY
live performances and online self-released recordings. To assist in this practice, social capital
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M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
accesses a neophyte graphic designer whose cultural capital builds the group’s image while his
social capital defrays the costs of promotion: ‘‘We are lucky enough to have a friend
who. . .designs our posters and prints them out. We get a 100 printed out for free’’ (Jerry,
Interview, 2006). While economic capital from income gained in a part-time cafe job combines
with a video maker’s cultural capital:
To make the next single we split the costs between the four [band members]. We all put in
however much it was—about 400 bucks each—and the video was real cheap, as well.
We’ve got real good contacts with a film producer [but] he’s only done two music videos
which have never gotten into the mainstream. . .he now wants to get into music video. This
is his first music video where he knew he had the chance to get it on to the mainstream: onto
[television music channels] Juice and C4 and stuff. He put his whole [self into it]—three
weeks, four weeks of dedication—everything was about us and he organised everything.
Got people to work on the set for free, got all these contacts to come in. Got [a chain store]
to come in and give us pizza on the day, and he spends so much time on the post-production.
(Jerry, Interview, 2006)
Here the mobilisation of another cultural entrepreneur’s cultural and social capital—the
embodied video making skills and social contacts to make things happen ‘for free’—assists in
producing the promotional video. Such transactions are all part of the pleasure of small-scale
cultural production and the performance of creative identities. However, also imminent is the
transformation of the pop song and video into an object representing all parties future exchangevalue. For the band, the video is an object converting shared social and cultural capitals into a
marker of ‘buzz’. This occurs through the future interpenetrated symbolic capitals generated
through radio airplay, online sales and chart positions, and media exposure. In turn the video
maker—himself a cultural entrepreneur in a related field—appropriates and then converts the
band’s collective cultural and symbolic capital embedded in the music video into further video
making opportunities.
Capital mobilisation is also a practice deployed in the promotion of cultural products,
particularly through building ‘buzz’ online. The Internet has sent a wave of Schumpeterian
creative destruction through the ‘golden age’ of the music industry. In its destructive mode, the
Internet allows consumers to bypass the price mechanism—and artificial scarcity—necessary to
convert recorded music into a consumer commodity. In its creative mode, new low cost digital
technologies have expanded the scope for DIY logics, transposing them with relative ease onto
online distribution systems. Through these channels, music producers can facilitate the
construction of a community of potential consumers through social networking sites, blogs,
download sites, and chat rooms. Now DIY strategies intermingle with mass-market aspirations as
a self-generated Internet audience can act as a marker of market potential to be appropriated by
cultural intermediaries (Young and Collins, 2010).
Yet, the forging of ‘buzz’ online does not require the selling of songs. In fact, much music is
released on the Internet without, or at a low, price—as the market incentives for placing a price on
music are almost non-existent (Oberholzer-Gee and Stumpf, 2007, p. 40). Nevertheless, online
sales charts still function as a template for comparing, valuing and ordering music producers, and
thus they act as a proxy for market potential. According to Attali (1985, p. 108), ‘‘charts give
value, channel, and select things that would otherwise. . .float undifferentiated’’. Website hits too
act in chart-like ways, emerging as proxies for popularity. Recognising this feature, a music
producer recounts the conversion of social capital into symbolic capital through the Internet:
‘‘I’m doing a big mail out about my new band [requesting you to view a new online promotional
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
249
video]. . .as we would like our YouTube clicks to go up’’ (Angela, Personal Correspondence, 23
March 2010).
Moreover, charts allow capital mobilisation to take greater effect in conversion strategies. For
Mark—who owns the small online techno label, T-Met, and works as a bar manager—such charts
are central to building ‘buzz’. For example, when releasing tracks, Mark mobilises social capital
to create symbolic capital:
Because I promoted dance parties for years and promoted touring internationals, I’ve
developed relationships with a lot of the big players overseas. [So when a T-Met song is
released online] I would then distribute it through all the channels that I’ve built up over
the years and through promotion lists that I’ve been on, and put the music back to them
saying: ‘Here is some music. It is coming out in a few months. See what you think, and
if you like it play it, chart it in the clubs, put it on the radio, put in it your charts‘‘.
(Mark, Interview, 2006)
It is through these field-specific institutions of consecration that, in the logic of cultural
entrepreneurship, mobilised social capital converts into symbolic capital and thus generates
economic capital. These logics are explained as follows:
These charts, they get published all over the world and it’s got our little tag on it. . .then
everyone around the world sees that so and so DJ in so and so country is playing a TMet track, they are going say, ‘‘Where can I get that T-Met track from, I want to follow
the big name’’. It’s an inspiration thing to see that track played by Technic or some
other big name, and they go, ‘‘Oh, where did you get that from, it’s a T-Met track?’’,
look up T-Met on Google—straight to the online music store where people can buy it.
(Mark, Interview, 2006)
However, there exists a continuing disjunction between the economic and symbolic capital
generated (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 120). The latter is more significant in generating ‘buzz’, while the
sale of the song in commodity form—for 75 pence through a UK online dance music retailer—is
secondary:
[This is] what I did with the first release we pushed internationally. . .[and] it went to
number one. But what we found is on average, if you want to make a top ten track or a
number one track, you only need to shift maybe 100 units of that in a short space of time—
over two weeks—and you’ve got a number one hit. (Mark, Interview, 2006)
This track by 17-year-old Christchurch techno music producer, Cynosure—although not
making any significant economic returns ($NZD157)—did accrue field-specific symbolic
capital for the artist and label. From this point, the symbolic capital of chart positions was
converted into other opportunities for Cynosure to construct himself as a ‘subject of value’ by
remixing established techno artists: ‘‘all the biggest names in the [Techno] world think he is
fantastic, they think he is great’’ (Mark, Interview, 2006). Also, through this iteration of
capital mobilisation and conversion, symbolic capital is propertised by Cynosure—allowing
further introductions to cultural intermediaries in the global subculture of electronic dance
music.
These examples are necessarily only suggestive of the myriad of capital mobilisations and
conversions that cultural entrepreneurs undertake. Although they are insignificant events in the
heteronymous logics of the field of music production, such mobilisations and conversions are
examples of the everyday practices cultural entrepreneurs undertake, and which are temporally
250
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
oriented to signalling their talent. Yet as a sensitising framework, capital mobilisation and
conversion does not suggest a linear or frictionless process. The marshalling of social, cultural,
and symbolic capital into cultural goods and promotional activities does not seamlessly translate
into ‘buzz’: these practices are not ‘‘simple ordinal structures of direct determination’’
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 107). But then the research focus was not how do music producers become
successful. More accurately, the focus has been upon how creative entrepreneurs’ relative
scarcity of economic capital and the current field comes to condition production practices. It has
highlighted how alternative capitals are deployed to produce and promote complex cultural
products necessary to form ‘buzz’ and how this practice is part of a larger project to construct the
cultural entrepreneur as Skeggs’ (2004) ‘subject of value’
Importantly, such capital mobilisation is not the instantaneous cash exchange of the
economic capital economy; it is much less exact than that—in terms of what gets exchanged,
appropriated and fused. It resembles more, then, reciprocal gift economies in cultural
entrepreneurs’ common endeavour. Bourdieu (1997b, p. 198), following Mauss (1989), argues
that gifts are conditioned by the time component—establishing bonds and obligations requiring
reciprocity and return in kind at a later time. Arguably, due to the lack of economic capital
available to cultural entrepreneurs such gift economies emerge to provide incentives for
collaborating in music production—most notably, through the ritual construction of shared
social identities using the immediate use-value of alternative capitals. Yet in such practices,
there also exist exchange-values that are temporally oriented towards heteronymous logics.
Capital mobilisation and conversion are practices uneasily holding these two temporal
dimensions together. As Somers (2005) observes, by drawing on readily available social capital
this presupposes ongoing obligations. Therefore, the reciprocal time-delayed dimension of usevalue mobilisations is the tacit obligation for cultural entrepreneurs to return capitals in their
exchange-value dimension. This takes two forms. First, co-contributors are to be used again in
projects where the symbolic and economic rewards are greater. Second, and more crucially, cocontributors can tacitly appropriate the future symbolic capital of a cultural product to present
themselves as a ‘subject of value’.
In regard to cost saving features for the economic capital economy, this extensive gift
economy of capital mobilisations provides some cultural intermediaries in ‘‘downsized
departments’’ the possibility to recognise ‘‘the whole package walking through the door’’, as
there is ‘‘no longer the level of internal support’’ available to develop artists.4 However, to get to
this stage involves concrete (and therefore monetised) time and a great deal of culturally
mediated exchange. Through the cultural entrepreneur’s capital mobilisation practices, the time
contributions and transaction costs are embedded in an gift economy that is not reflected in the
market price of the commodity—be that a concert, download sale, compact disc sale, radio
airplay royalties, or website traffic (on free labour, see Terranova, 2000). Neither the significant
time costs of engaging in capital mobilisation and conversion are measured nor are they
monetised—remaining a hidden gift to audiences and cultural intermediaries (Bourdieu, 1997a,
1997b). Consequently, capital mobilisation and conversion presents a different interpretation to
existing understandings of cultural entrepreneurship. It highlights the nuanced general economy
of practices necessary to create the image of future potential at the periphery of the heteronymous
pole (Adkins, 2008).
4
This is from Vicky Blood (formerly the UK marketing manager for a major record label) at the 2005 Warrant of
Fitness seminar.
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
251
6. Conclusion
Because of the exploratory nature of the research there are a number of limitations.
Empirically, it is difficult to recount what are highly nuanced social exchanges without more
exhaustive ethnographic work. Neither has Wellington’s (a compact city with a large government
sector) nor Auckland’s (a sprawling suburban agglomeration) specific urban character been
considered in how this might condition cultural entrepreneurs’ reconversion strategies.
Furthermore, this interpretation of cultural entrepreneurship as capital mobilisation and
conversion replays Sayer’s (1999) critiques of Bourdieu. The above application of Bourdieu renarrates a mode of rational actor analysis that emphasises agents’ self-interest and the relentless
struggles over status demarcations (Bourdieu, 1984). However, marginal cultural production
evinces a heteroglossia of subjective motivations. These include non-instrumental orientations—
such as the resurrection of moral economies (Banks, 2006); sub-group solidarity around cultural
production which reinforces social bonds (Cheal, 1988); and the sheer sociable pleasure of
making culture (Finnegan, 1989; Merrill, 2010). Therefore, what has been highlighted above is
that when considering cultural entrepreneurs’ career motivations—although not consciously
rational calculation—these actions nevertheless take on a serious candour through an illusio in
the field conditioned by a habitus attuned to its logics and rewards.
Despite the theoretically imposed limitations of a Bourdieuian analysis, this article’s aim
was to augment the qualitative literature on work in the cultural industries by exploring DIY
music producers’ entrepreneurial practices. In doing so, it has revised understandings of
contemporary cultural entrepreneurs. It was argued that these are youthful agents who adopt
entrepreneurial dispositions to generate cultural products while reproducing their labour
power through flexible labour markets, notably the expanding service sector. As these cultural
entrepreneurs start from an economically constrained position, attention was drawn to
Bourdieu’s alternative capital forms as the other resources that can be readily draw upon in
building careers. Bourdieu also illuminated the field of music production and the enduring role
of cultural intermediaries and ‘buzz’. Applying Skeggs’ (2004) work, it was suggested that
cultural entrepreneurship requires the mobilisation and conversion of alternative capitals to
construct ‘buzz’. Here, two modalities were significant: the use-value of pleasurably making
identity enhancing cultural products and the latent exchange-value these products generate
when entering circuits of symbolic capital accumulation. It was argued that, through this
general economy of practices, cultural entrepreneurs seek to construct themselves as ‘subjects
of value’. Primarily, this process occurs through the tacit appropriation of symbolic capital that
the cultural product generates. Arguably such practices are an endemic feature of the
celebrated ‘new cultural economy’. Therefore, a more detailed typology and verification of
capital mobilisation and conversion practices could be developed through investigations of
fringe festivals, fashion design networks, or new digital forms of independent film and
television production.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank David Craig, Nabeel Zuberi, and Sharyn Roach Anleu for initial
advice and comments. The insightful criticism of the four anonymous reviewers and support
offered by Timothy Dowd and Susanne Janssen have improved this paper dramatically from
its original version. This research was funded by a University of Auckland Doctoral
Scholarship.
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M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
Appendix A
Table A1
Informants for cultural entrepreneurs, cultural entrepreneurship.
Pseudonym
Organisation
Age
Education/experience
Helen
Major Label
29
Mick
Major Label
33
Louise
Rosamund
Major Label
Band Manager of Commercially
Successful Acts
27
48
Diane
Industry Group,
Independent Radio
Independent Label Owner,
Bar Manager
Musician, Store Worker
38
Bachelor’s degree (Commerce)
7 years industry experience, including in the UK
Online marketing expertise
13 years industry experience as commercial
radio plugger
9 years industry experience in sales and promotion
Bachelor’s degree (Commerce)
26 years industry experience, including role as
marketing manager for major label in the UK
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
20 years industry experience, including college radio
4 years industry experience
Mark
Rod
28
24
Steve
Musician, Higher Education
Teacher
39
Jerry
Musician, Café Worker
23
Gerti
Band Manager, Service Worker
47
Guy
State Industry Group
32
Colin
Michelle
State Industry Group
State Arts Group
58
49
Warren
Musician, Construction Worker
35
Rata
Musician, Service Worker
28
Lachlan
Musician, Instrument Teacher
33
Manu
Musician, Instrument Teacher
27
Nick
Musician
30
Seb
Angela
Musician, Store Worker
Band Manager,
Freelance Accountant
25
37
Diploma (Music Performance)
6 years experience in DIY production, including
tours to Australia
Master’s degree (Arts)
18 years DIY experience, including
international tour and significant domestic
radio airplay
Bachelor’s degree (Commerce)
5 years DIY experience
Since interview, has gained international
recording contract
25 years industry experience
Former sales manager for major label in Europe
Master’s degree (Arts)
12 years experience in promotion and broadcasting
35 years industry experience in state arts organisations
Master’s degree
15 years industry experience
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
17 years DYI experience, including gold
record (7000 units sold)
Diploma (Sound Production)
12 years DIY experience
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
15 years DIY experience and session musician
Master’s degree (Music Performance)
6 years DIY experience
Master’s degree (Arts)
14 years industry experience, including
multi-platinum sales and international touring
6 years DIY experience
Bachelor’s degree (Commerce)
24 years industry experience, including
being a venue owner
M. Scott / Poetics 40 (2012) 237–255
253
Table A1 (Continued )
Pseudonym
Organisation
Age
Education/experience
Ryan
Studio and Independent
Label Owner
Independent Label Owner
26
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
15 years industry experience
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
33 years experience, including overseeing
gold and platinum selling artists
Bachelor’s degree (Commerce)
10 years DIY experience, including platinum
sales and international tours
Diploma (Music Performance)
4 years DIY experience
Bachelor’s degree (Arts)
10 years DIY experience
Since interview, gained international recording contract
Tony
53
Duncan
Musician, Merchandise
Company Owner
33
Sara
Musician, Café Worker
24
Cheryl
Musician, Office Temp
27
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Michael Scott is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography, Population and Environmental Management at
Flinders University, Australia. His work has been recently published in Popular Music and The Journal of Sociology.