Music Festivals and the Everyday Nature of Extraordinary Experiences

Abstract

This chapter focuses on live music and music festival experiences and their conceptual treatment to date in the marketing and consumer research literature. We highlight the variety of ways in which music festivals have been hitherto theorised and we further identify two distinct conceptual strands which revolve around their extraordinary experiential nature. In contrast to standard conceptualisations, we argue that contemporary music festivals can be also perceived as significant places of societal ritualisation which are positioned within the confines of everyday life and the logics of specific music fields and scenes. In doing so, we extend O'Reilly et al.'s (2013) characteristics of the form and function of music festivals and highlight their role for music consumers, professionals, and scenes. We conclude by drawing theoretical implications and identifying potential areas for future research at the intersection of arts marketing, music, and experiential consumption.