Live Concert Research Articles

From structural listening to daydreaming: Listening modes influence the individual experience in live concerts

Listening modes are often ignored in music perception research, especially when it comes to the supposedly attentive listening situation of a classical concert. The audience members’ various ways of listening, understood as the directedness of activity toward different dimensions of sound, is hypothesized to play a key role in the experience of live music. We assessed listening activity of participants ( N = 786) attending a series of experimental live concerts. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed the following five listening modes: emotional-immersive, structural, sound-causal, diffuse, and single-focused. Furthermore, listening modes significantly predicted affective states (positive activation, negative activation, and valence) after the concert. Results show that, despite music educational paradigms, structural listening increases negative activation, whereas emotional-immersive and sound-causal listening increase valence and lead to relaxation in a classical music performance. The results are in line with former empirical and theoretical taxonomies of listening modes and provide a new contribution to the understanding of the role of listening modes for the perception and aesthetic experience of music in live concerts and beyond.

Audio-visual concert performances synchronize audience's heart rates.

People enjoy engaging with music. Live music concerts provide an excellent option to investigate real-world music experiences, and at the same time, use neurophysiological synchrony to assess dynamic engagement. In the current study, we assessed engagement in a live concert setting using synchrony of cardiorespiratory measures, comparing inter-subject, stimulus-response, correlation, and phase coherence. As engagement might be enhanced in a concert setting by seeing musicians perform, we presented audiences with audio-only (AO) and audio-visual (AV) piano performances. Only correlation synchrony measures were above chance level. In comparing time-averaged synchrony across conditions, AV performances evoked a higher inter-subject correlation of heart rate (ISC-HR). However, synchrony averaged across music pieces did not correspond to self-reported engagement. On the other hand, time-resolved analyses show that synchronized deceleration-acceleration heart rate (HR) patterns, typical of an "orienting response" (an index of directed attention), occurred within music pieces at salient events of section boundaries. That is, seeing musicians perform heightened audience engagement at structurally important moments in Western classical music. Overall, we could show that multisensory information shapes dynamic engagement. By comparing different synchrony measures, we further highlight the advantages of time series analysis, specifically ISC-HR, as a robust measure of holistic musical listening experiences in naturalistic concert settings.

Towards a new understanding of the score-performance dilemmas

In scores from the Western Classical tradition, the ambiguity between the notated music and the actual performance and perception continues to draw audiences to live concerts. This discrepancy presents dilemmas that are challenging to resolve but warrant further investigation: What could be notated but is deemed unnecessary or unfeasible? What constitutes 'licence'? Where do the boundaries lie between cultural norms and personal expression? To what extent can a composer's intentions be discerned? Which of these considerations should be integrated into music education? The aim of this conceptual article is to enhance the theoretical understanding of musical score interpretation by drawing on existing empirical and theoretical insights from different fields. It seeks to identify relationships, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in existing literature, highlight their shortcomings, and outline future directions to address these questions. I conclude that current research on this topic does not yet provide universally accepted answers, thereby hindering the development of a comprehensive, explanatory model of musical score interpretation. Lastly, I propose a novel hermeneutic approach aligned with Elliott’s praxial philosophy in music education and Ricoeur’s concept of Mimesis. This approach offers a new framework for conducting interdisciplinary studies aimed at developing a holistic model for understanding musical score interpretation.

Development and Validation of an AI Virtual Streamer Scale for Live-Streaming E-Commerce

In recent years, AI virtual streamers (i.e., digital characters with human-like appearances) have become a pervasive e-commerce phenomenon but remain almost unexplored in the literature on e-commerce marketing. The possible reasons for this deficiency are the vagueness of the AI virtual streamer concept and the lack of a measurement tool. Therefore, this study aimed to conceptualize AI virtual streamers and develop an AI virtual streamer characteristic scale through five stages based on social response theory. Following item generation, measurement refinement, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factory analysis and nomological validity, a third-dimensional (persona, anthropomorphism, and interactivity) scale with 10 items was established. Empirical results reveal sound measurement qualities in terms of reliability and validity, and demonstrate its unique position in respect to established marketing concepts. The developed scale has managerial implications for designing and applying virtual humans or avatars, such as virtual employees, virtual spokespersons, virtual idols, and virtual guided tours. This tool also enables future research on virtual live streaming, such as virtual destination live streaming, virtual education live streaming, or virtual live concerts.

Creating a specialized dataset for enhanced noise compliance in live concert environments

Regulatory guidelines mandate strict noise levels during concerts, specially for night leisure soundscapes, yet accurate compliance assessment is hindered by the presence of extraneous noises. This paper presents a methodology focused on creating a specialized dataset tailored to address this challenge. We have captured several live concerts, ensuring the dataset's relevance and applicability in noise compliance assessments. This paper exposes the methodology followed since the deployment of the sensors until the labeling of the most relevant parts of it by using the LAeq levels to select the most prominent sound sources. The dataset has been used to use a PANN and incorporate a classification mechanism into a noise monitoring platform for live concerts. By leveraging LAeq levels to identify prominent sound sources, our methodology ensures the inclusion of key acoustic events in the dataset, facilitating subsequent analysis and classification tasks. The integration of a PANN (Pretrained Audio Neural Network) enables the development of a robust classification mechanism tailored to the intricacies of live concert environments. This work underscores the importance of specialized datasets in addressing the challenges of noise compliance in concert settings, offering a modest resource for advancing research and practical applications in this field.

Fans and Friendships: The Power of Live Concerts among Chinese Young Adults

This qualitative study explores the concert-going experiences of Chinese young adults, focusing on the role of parasocial relationships and interactive ritual chains in shaping their emotional engagement and social interactions. Through in-depth interviews with nine participants, the research reveals how social media fosters parasocial relationships, enhancing fans’ emotional connections with pop stars and motivating concert attendance. The study also examines the ritual of exchanging souvenirs, which strengthens communal bonds and distinguishes true fans through their non-commercial exchanges. The findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted appeal of live pop music concerts.

Age and familiarity effects on musical memory.

A common complaint in older adults is trouble with their memory, especially for new information. Current knowledge about normal aging and changes in memory identify a divide between memory tasks that are unaffected by aging and those that are. Among the unaffected are recognition tasks. These memory tasks rely on accessing well-known information, often include environmental support, and tend to be automatic. Negative age effects on memory are often observed at both encoding and during recall. Older adults often have difficulty with recall tasks, particularly those that require effortful self-initiated processing, episodic memory, and retention of information about contextual cues. Research in memory for music in healthy aging suggests a skill-invariance hypothesis: that age effects dominate when general-purpose cognitive mechanisms are needed to perform the musical task at hand, while experience effects dominate when music-specific knowledge is needed to perform the task [1]. The goals of this pair of studies were to investigate the effects of age and familiarity on musical memory in the context of real pieces of music, and to compare a live concert experimental setting with a lab-based experimental setting. Participants' task was to click a button (or press the spacebar) when they heard the target theme in three pieces of music. One was Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the others were original pieces commissioned for this study, one tonal and one atonal. Participants heard the relevant theme three times before listening to a piece of music. The music was performed by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra; participants either attended the concert, or watched a recording of the concert in the lab. Participants also completed two short cognitive tests and filled out a questionnaire collecting demographic information and a hearing abilities self-assessment. We find a significant effect of familiarity and setting but not of age or musical training on recognition performance as measured by d'. More specifically, performance is best for the familiar, tonal piece, moderate for the unfamiliar tonal piece and worst for the unfamiliar atonal piece. Performance was better in the live setting than the lab setting. The absence of an age effect provides encouraging evidence that music's diverse cues may encourage cognitive scaffolding, in turn improving encoding and subsequent recognition. Better performance in an ecological versus lab setting supports the expansion of ecological studies in the field.

Sound amplification problems in live concerts

Sound amplification problems in live concerts

Innovative communication of molecular evolution through sound: a biological sonification concert

BackgroundA major challenge of evolutionary biology is making underlying concepts accessible to wide audiences. One method for doing so is to utilise multi-media formats that have potential to engage and inform through entertainment. This pilot study outlines and discusses a sonification concert that integrated musical performance with a range of evolutionary concepts and ideas fundamental to an understanding of evolution, such as protein sequences. We aimed to showcase sound-art objects and live-coding performances created using sonification as a mechanism for presenting complex biological processes to both researcher and non-researchers. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of this art-adjacent practice for public engagement with evolutionary biology research, and also to gather feedback to guide future events. Toward this end, we held a live concert showcasing biologically-based algorithmic music exploring links between evolutionary biology research, sound art, and musical performance. The event had three main acts: a generative audio-visual piece giving an artistic representation of SARS coronavirus based on a parameter-mapping sonification of protein sequence of the replicase polyprotein; a pre-recorded string ensemble demonstrating the effects of codon selection on translation speed using parameter-mapping sonification; and a live-coded music piece interactively sonifying protein structures.ResultsOur event attracted 90 attendees. We evaluated success using direct observation and written feedback forms with a 58% response rate: 95% of respondents stated they had enjoyed the event and 63% indicated they were inspired by it.ConclusionsPresenting the sonic outputs of sonification research in a concert format showed good potential for the pursuit of public engagement with evolutionary biology research, demonstrating the ability to engage curiosity and inspire an audience while also conveying scientific content alongside the nuanced and complex world of modern evolutionary biology.

‘It's mostly an accompaniment to something’

‘It's mostly an accompaniment to something’

Capturing differences in perception and aesthetic judgment of live or medially presented music: development of a self-report instrument.

Nowadays there are multiple ways to perceive music, from attending concerts (live) to listening to recorded music through headphones (medial). In between there are many mixed modes, such as playback performances. In empirical music research, this plurality of performance forms has so far found little recognition. Until now no measuring instrument has existed that could adequately capture the differences in perception and aesthetic judgment. The purpose of our empirical investigation was to capture all dimensions relevant to such an assessment. Using 3D-simulations and dynamic binaural synthesis, various live and medial situations were simulated. A qualitative survey was conducted at the Department of Audio Communication of the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin). With the help of the repertory grid technique, a data pool of approximately 400 attribute pairs was created and individual rating data were collected. Our first study served to create a semantic differential. In a second study, this semantic differential was evaluated. The development of the semantic differential was carried out by first using a mixed-method approach to qualitative analysis according to grounded theory. Thereafter, a principal component analysis reduced the attribute pairs to 67 items in four components. The semantic differential consists of items concerning acoustic, visual and audio-visual interaction as well as items with an overarching assessment of the stimuli. The evaluation study, comprising 45 participants (23 male and 22 female, M = 42.56 years, SD = 17.16) who rated 12 stimuli each, reduced the items to 61 and resulted in 18 subscales and nine single items. Because the survey used simulations, the social component may be underrepresented. Nevertheless, the questionnaire we created enables the evaluation of music performances (especially for classical concerts) in a new scope, thus opening many opportunities for further research. For example, in a live concert context, we observed not only that seating position influences the judgment of sound quality but also that visual elements influence immersion and felt affect. In the future, the differential could be reviewed for a larger stimulus pool, extended or used modularly for different research questions.

Enhancing music recognition using deep learning-powered source separation technology for cochlear implant users.

Cochlear implant (CI) is currently the vital technological device for assisting deaf patients in hearing sounds and greatly enhances their sound listening appreciation. Unfortunately, it performs poorly for music listening because of the insufficient number of electrodes and inaccurate identification of music features. Therefore, this study applied source separation technology with a self-adjustment function to enhance the music listening benefits for CI users. In the objective analysis method, this study showed that the results of the source-to-distortion, source-to-interference, and source-to-artifact ratios were 4.88, 5.92, and 15.28 dB, respectively, and significantly better than the Demucs baseline model. For the subjective analysis method, it scored higher than the traditional baseline method VIR6 (vocal to instrument ratio, 6 dB) by approximately 28.1 and 26.4 (out of 100) in the multi-stimulus test with hidden reference and anchor test, respectively. The experimental results showed that the proposed method can benefit CI users in identifying music in a live concert, and the personal self-fitting signal separation method had better results than any other default baselines (vocal to instrument ratio of 6 dB or vocal to instrument ratio of 0 dB) did. This finding suggests that the proposed system is a potential method for enhancing the music listening benefits for CI users.

The Future Landscape of Live Entertainment in the Post-Pandemic Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic shift in how people consume entertainment, prompting a surge in remote activities and redefining traditional paradigms. As the world grapples with these rapid developments, a crucial and complex question remains at the forefront: can online live performances genuinely supplant the longstanding tradition of offline live concerts or shows? This paper delves deep into this evolving landscape, exploring the dynamic interplay between these formats while considering a multitude of factors. It considers audience preferences, highlighting how online concerts have proven financially lucrative but often lack the emotional depth of their offline counterparts, which, remarkably, continue to thrive and are even projected to surpass pre-pandemic revenue levels. Amidst these considerations, a new trend emerges with hybrid concerts, blending online and offline elements to cater to diverse preferences. In this transformative and ever-evolving environment, both formats coexist, offering artists and audiences a vibrant spectrum of options, ultimately reshaping the future of the entertainment industry.

Audience Musical Absorption: Exploring Attention and Affect in the Live Concert Setting

Musical absorption is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that has been understood in various ways, but is related to strong, immersive, and transformative musical encounters. For this exploratory article, we used a phenomenologically and psychologically informed questionnaire to measure audience members’ reports of musical absorption and affective experiences at the MusicLab Copenhagen research concert with the Danish String Quartet (DSQ). We aimed to examine the relation between musical absorption and (1) attention, mind-wandering, and senses of transformation; (2) affective phenomena of feeling moved or touched and awe; (3) social context, as determined by technological mediation of a livestream; (4) musical context (Beethoven, Schnittke, and folk music); and (5) motion. There were 91 participants in the live audience and 43 participants in the livestreaming audience, who completed questionnaires after each piece in the concert and who had their motion measured through an application that recorded accelerometer data from their smartphones. Drawing on methods from experimental psychology, we found that (1) being “absorbed in the music” was not related to mind-wandering, but it was related to a sense of positive transformation; (2) musical absorption was related to experiences of feeling moved, awe, connectedness, and enjoyment, and to being an “admirer” of the DSQ, as well as to being familiar with the music; (3) being at the live concert facilitated more musical absorption than watching the livestream; (4) the final concert section, containing a collection of folk tunes, promoted the most musical absorption; and (5) within the restrained movement dynamics of the live audience, motion trended as an indicator of an embodied experience of musical absorption. We use these results to engage in a phenomenologically informed and empirically enriched discussion of musical absorption and related affective and attentional dynamics.

Digital transformations in arts and entertainment

This paper examines a series of digital transformations in arts and entertainment focused creative industries ( television, recorded music, live concerts, museums, computer games) impacted by digital innovations arising within these industries. Our paper demonstrates how continuous improvement in semiconductor technology (based on the doubling of chip density every two years as predicted by Moore’s law) has fostered advances in digital device capabilities, speed, portability, cost reduction and device integration that has made possible an array of innovative digital products, services and methods of engaging arts and entertainment audiences. Our analysis focuses on six innovative transformations: the digitization of the television set and transformation of television viewing and services, MP3 sound compression transformation of the recorded music industry, video streaming transformation of television programming, 3 D holography and hologram transformation of live concerts, multimedia, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) transformation of museum audience engagement, and eSports transformation of video game industry participation and audience engagement. We also note the creative destructive impacts on non-digitized (analog) elements of some of these industries and identify transformational trends shaping the futures of these industries.

Enacting Musical Aesthetics: The Embodied Experience of Live Music

The vitality and affective potential of the live concert experience is a result of rich, cross-sensory interactions and varied participatory practices. The complexity of such entanglements has recently led philosophers to argue for an enactive, affordance-based approach that interrogates a variety of perceptual and sensory possibilities inherent in aesthetic experiences. Further, Shaun Gallagher's recent addition of the 4As (Affect, Agency, Affordance, Autonomy) to the 4Es (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended) for clarifying mind–world relations seem to have potent explanatory power for these kinds of encounters. Building on such current philosophical approaches while examining specific (and actual) live musical engagement, this article offers an interpretation of selected audience data from the MusicLab Copenhagen with the Danish String Quartet research concert to discuss particular responses from the audience physically present at the venue. Responding to neuroaesthetic approaches, we clarify the audience members’ individual and collective aesthetic experience through an enactive, affordance-based approach. We suggest that what is at play in the live concert environment is a mode of attentive dynamic listening. Rather than seeking to characterize the audience as passively responding to music, a 4Es/4As approach to aesthetic experience seeks to clarify embodied-enactive audience engagement for which anticipation is a dynamic factor that enables further musical action and resonance, also for the musicians on stage.

İspanyol kültür ve eğlence endüstrisine COVID-19 etkisi: Dijital ekonomide kamu ve özel yönetimin değerlendirilmesi

This research evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the Spanish cultural and entertainment industry in a context of digital economy, with the facilitation of cultural consumption and social wellbeing during the confinements. Thus, after discussing some issues related to digital economy and wellbeing economics, there is an empirical analysis based on data collected by means of a questionnaire. It is found that the consumption of culture has increased during the quarantine mainly as a means of entertainment for dealing with boredom, anxiety and stress. Audiovisual products were consumed by almost all individuals, especially in the form of movies and series. Regarding music, we find that singers or groups that performed live concerts and interacted with their fans via social networks were better positioned. Reading was also a relevant activity during the quarantine, with people preferring the paper format rather than the digital one. It is noteworthy that the most consumed cultural products from Spanish productions. In this way, the COVID-19 crisis did not necessarily generate a crisis for the cultural industry and, in fact, provided relevant opportunities for the growth and consolidation of this sector to the extent that the actors rapidly adapted to the digital transformation. Also, this digitalization of cultural organizations it helps to keep the social wellbeing with entertainment against the lonely and stressful situations.

When Accessibility Becomes Performance

Accessibility is a key concept in audiovisual translation. In recent years, the importance of equal access not only to information, services, and media, but also to the arts has been gaining more attention. Accessibility provisions for popular music, however, have not been as comprehensive as for other types of music. In order to facilitate access to music for deaf signers, a generation of interpreter-performers started to embody nonverbal elements of the “text,” such as rhythm, pitch, tempo, etc., when translating a song into sign language. This practice, which is a form of audiovisual translation, is gaining momentum and has been the object of analysis in other disciplines (e.g., Musicology or Deaf Studies), but is under-investigated within Translation and Interpreting Studies. Working from studies in signed songs, from the work of Grant, and from Marinetti’s notion of translation as “performative rewriting”, I aim to show that performativity, intended as an action related to performance, but also with transformative potential, can become an element and a carrier of accessibility, and is at the core of these interpreting practices. The distinction between accessibility and access, however, must also be taken into account, and whether these practices actually facilitate access remains to be established by the deaf community. Lay summary Nowadays service providers pay more attention to the notion of accessibility and access, and not only to information and services, but also to the arts. More and more sign language interpreters translate songs and live concert in sign language to facilitate access for deaf people. They translate the lyrics of songs but also embody other elements of music in their interpretation, thus making music a visual form of performing art. Notions such as accessibility and access, however, are far from uncontroversial. Accessibility Studies scholar Greco has clarified the difference between the two. In this article I argue that performativity is an element and a carrier of accessibility. The idea of performativity is further elaborated working from Performance Philosophy, rather than Performance Theory. I further argue that, while sign-language-interpreted music is an accessibility provision, only deaf people can establish whether it actually facilitates access to music.

The complementary relationship between live performances and post-concert streaming for top-performing artists

ABSTRACT This article examines the complementary effects of live concerts on incremental post-concert music streams in 29 US cities. The work identifies that performers who have greater concert ticket demand, deeper hit-song catalogues and/or are in the middle of their careers experience stronger trends in their post-concert streams. While I found a positive complementary relationship between concert and streaming that lasts up to 10 weeks after the event, this work also highlights the negative effects when performers cancel shows. Using hand-collected data of concert ticket sales, music streaming, and song rankings from the top 60 global performing artists, I utilized a panel model with artist and market fixed-effects to identify post-concert decaying effects. This work will help top-performing artists gain insight into the little-understood influence of live performance on post-concert streaming of their recorded music.

Calming effects of repetition in music for children with sensory sensitivities: Findings from two experimental studies

Sensory sensitivity and anxiety are often experienced by neurodivergent children. Repetitive physical actions are a common way to self-regulate and reduce anxiety, yet stigma attached to these actions can discourage people with sensory sensitivities from participating in public events such as concerts. Children with sensory sensitivities therefore often miss out on the social benefits of attending live concerts. This paper reports the results of two studies (for each N = 20) investigating whether the predictability/level of internal repetition in classical music can be calming for Australian children aged 5–14 with sensory sensitivities. Study 1 utilized a one-on-one laboratory setting with live piano performance (two low repetition pieces, two high repetition pieces), whereas Study 2 used a group performance setting with a live cello performance (one low repetition piece, one high repetition piece). Proxy measures of anxiety and engagement were completed by parents/carers in both studies, and facial expressions and finger oximeter measures were also captured in Study 1. Across the two studies both music types had a calming effect compared to baseline, with Study 2 also indicating significantly higher interest, involvement, and enjoyment levels for high repetition music. These findings have implications for the use of music for children with sensory sensitivities in arts programming and therapeutic contexts.