Beyond social class and status. The network embeddedness of music consumption

Abstract

The relationship between stratification and music consumption patterns has become a vibrant field of study in recent years, not only in the sociology of music but also in sociology tout court. It is widely accepted that musical consumption is undergoing profound change, from a tight correspondence between social positions and tastes (the homology argument) to an omnivoreunivore model marked by a greater diversity of preferences among those in higher social strata. What is less understood in both frameworks is how musical consumption is related to an individual’s social networks, net of other structural variables (e.g. class or status). Drawing on original quantitative data collected by the author, the paper tries to establish, first, whether diversity of personal networks is conducive to greater heterogeneity in musical preferences and knowledge, and second, what role “weak” and “strong” ties play. It is confirmed that people whose networks are richer in weak connections are more likely to be omnivores while this is not true in the case of strong ties. Some possible explanations of the findings, as well as directions of future studies, are outlined.