Betwixt and Between: Musical Taste Patterns and Audience Mobility

The inadequacy of the traditional highbrow-popular dichotomy as it has been applied to audiences is well emphasised by the subsidiary category of middlebrow. It provides a straightforward description for a zone between elite culture and entertainment that is in truth vastly more complex. In this article, three empirical research projects with connections to music are examined. Each classifies consumer taste patterns by utilising categories (such as middlebrow) and genres (such as classical) which are at best highly ambiguous. By way of a re-examination of the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, I argue for a renewed emphasis upon the potential for diversity and mobility amongst audiences. It is recommended that future research should focus more upon the full range of an individual’s tastes, and upon the various ways that audience members are able to operate in contradiction to the dominant cultural paradigm.