From the Music Scene to Musicalized Networks

Several notions have been developed in research currents studying popular music, to examine the geographic, social and economic dimensions of musical facts and their dynamics. These notions were jointly developed and mobilized by French and English-speaking researchers from cultural studies, political economy (or socio-economics of cultural industries), and the sociology of arts and culture. This article considers the possible divergences and articulations between three of these notions, the scene, the proto-market and the musicalized network, and discusses their respective heuristic potentials. Based on the example of musicians from various parts of France and the United Kingdom, we seek to show just how useful these notions can be to study the modalities of development of music projects, particularly to examine the musicians’ construction of the symbolic and economic value of their musical activities.