Gatekeeping, Homophily, and Status Orders among Live-Music Venues in Atlanta

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Status and Hierarchies

Abstract

This study examines the live-music market (or “scene”) in Atlanta, GA. I focus on the impact of both gatekeepers and social capital within the live-music scene, and how both play out with regards to the music featured at a range of venues. I do this by analyzing self-gathered data collected from local newspapers, which document 175 live-music venues in Atlanta in the year of 2012—with 5,531 performers offering some 11,000 appearances in Atlanta venues. The results obtained by utilizing social network analysis show that social capital at the aggregate level operates in a manner that live-music venues within homophilous niches (based on ticket-price and featured genres) converge in terms of band-booking similarity. Not only do the attributes of venues (e.g., pricing, genres) matter for social capital, so too does the manner of their connections—as venues with common “friend(s)” are more likely to be linked in terms of booking the same performers. Furthermore, inequality in live-music scenes also matters, as I find that a status order, with its attendant “competitive jostling” and “emulation,” emerge among venues occupying different positions in the status order. This study thus contributes to the scholarship with an emphasis on “embeddedness” by demonstrating how the market for live music is a domain in which social factors are intertwined with economic elements.

Author

• Yun Tai, University of Virginia