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The purpose of this study is to focus on analyzing the role of music subcultures in the communication and promotion of conspicuous consumption practices. The object of study is the “altered movement” as the music style of the drug subculture in Mexico.

A qualitative content analysis of 78 lyrics and music videos of “altered movement” was carried out between August and December 2018.

The analysis of lyrics and music videos leads to the identification of four narratives (from poor to rich, power through violence, lavish lifestyle and power over women) and diverse symbolic markers (luxury brands mainly) that together, display messages aimed at promoting conspicuous consumption practices.

The current research expands the body of literature of music subcultures in the consumer research area by contesting the common conception of this phenomenon as a healthy source of self-identity formation and deepening into its role as a source of conspicuous consumption practices.

The deadhead subculture – centered around the band Grateful Dead – has been active for 50+ years. Despite its longevity, academic work is sparse compared to other music subcultures. Given its durability and resilience, this subculture offers an opportunity to explore subcultural development and maintenance. I employ a contemporary, symbolic interactionist approach to trace the development of deadhead subculture and subcultural identity. Although identity is a basic concept in subculture research, it is not well defined: I suggest that the co-creation and maintenance of subcultural identity can be seen as a dialectic between collective identity and symbolic interactionist conceptions of individual role-identity.

The purpose of this paper is to the investigate the rock music, and in particular the genre known as heavy metal, subculture in Iran and identify its relationship to social responsibility.

The research was conducted qualitatively through in-depth interview with more than 100 rock music fans who identify themselves as belonging to the particular subculture under investigation. It also investigates the history of such music within the country to explain that it is marginalized and forbidden in a way which is not generally understood in Western countries.

The findings of the paper show that the fans of the music identify themselves as a particular subculture within the society and share not just an interest in the music but also in social concerns, politics and religion.

This paper shows that subcultures are interrelated with social responsibility and that this is dependent upon the nature of the society in which the subculture resides. This is important in understanding the dynamics of change within a country.

This is one of the very few papers which looks at the link between subcultures and social responsibility and, therefore, is important in showing that social responsibility can develop independently of any organization while not being bounded by the nature of the society which spawns it.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of cultural production, consumption and intermediation in the context of digital music.

This research adopts an interpretivist, ethnoconsumerist epistemology along with a netnographic research design combined with hermeneutic analysis. Interpreting both the text view and field view of an ethnoconsumerist approach, the netnographic research design includes participant observation across multiple social media platforms as well as virtual interviews and analysis of media material. The context of application is a digital music subculture known as Vaporwave. Vaporwave participants deliberately distort fundamental aspects of modern and postmodern culture in a digital, musical, artistic and storied manner.

Hermeneutic analysis has identified a critical and nostalgic narrative of consumerism and hyper-reality, evident as symbolic parallels, intertextual relationships, existential themes and cultural codes. As a techno savvy community embracing lo-fi production, self-releasing promotion and anonymity from within a complexity of aliases and myriad collaborations, the vaporous existentialism of Vaporwave participants skirts copyright liability in the process. Accordingly, Vaporwave is documented as blurring reality and fantasy, material and symbolic, production and consumption. Essentially, Vaporwave participants are shown to be digital natives turned digital rebels and heretical consumers, better described as cultural curators.

This research demonstrates a more complex notion of cultural production, consumption and intermediation, argued to be more accurately described as cultural curation.

As digital heretics, Vaporwave participants challenge traditional notions of modernity, such as copyright law, and postmodern notions such as working consumers and consuming producers.

Vaporwave participants present a case of digital natives turned digital rebels and consumer heretics, who are actively curating culture.

This interpretive ethnoconusmerist study combining netnography and hermeneutic analysis of an online underground music subculture known as Vaporwave shows digital music artists as cultural curators.

For some, gender remains a mechanism of marginalization within mainstream popular culture because of expectations concerning what femininity and masculinity entail. This marginalization refers both broadly to the way girls/women are marginalized as well as the marginalization of those boys/men who fail to conform to societal gendered expectations. If alternativity is synonymous with resistance to this mainstream popular culture it would be logical to then assume that alternative spaces could provide opportunities for pursuing alternative understandings of gender. But to what extent does empirical work support this proposition? Are alternative spaces created or used in ways which envision gender differently to hegemonic discourses concerning femininity/masculinity? Or do normative gendered beliefs and practices prevail? This chapter will critically explore these questions through a number of alternative spaces, drawing out key themes and emerging gaps. This exploration will take the subcultural work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies as its starting point, acknowledging the limitations of such work in theorising gender within alternative spaces, before exploring what empirical work across a number of subcultural spaces ‘offers’ in relation to gender. Before concluding the chapter will, more briefly, consider a relatively more recent consideration of online alternative spaces.

In this paper I bring together interaction, media, deviance, self, and identity to make sense of how young Singaporeans consume Korean popular (hereafter, K-pop) music and culture. My overarching goal is to highlight that being a music fan is not a straightforward or even easy experience. Rather, the self as music fan is continually developing within a complex variety of social processes, from the circulation of global, mass media representations to inter- and intra-personal interactions. I present data collected from a study on K-pop music consumption in Singapore, a small island-nation in Southeast Asia with an insatiable thirst for foreign culture. The data show how a group of Singaporean K-pop fans were regularly bombarded with largely negative messages about what it means to be K-pop music fans, and how these meanings affected their own negotiations as fans. K-pop fandom provided a sense of shared identity and status within popular youth culture, yet their experiences were often soured by negative media portrayals of deviant fans, whose behaviors risked stigmatizing the K-pop social identity. This paper thus deals with some of the problems for self that being a music fans entails.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model of consumer response to music in broadcast commercials outlining four variables (listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and advertising processing strategy) that affect a consumer's attitude toward the advertising music (A_am).

The paper takes the form of an integrative review of the relevant literatures from the psychology of music, marketing, and advertising.

A_am can be positively but also negatively influenced by many factors. Only some of these variables are employed in any typical study on consumer response to music, which may account for some conflicting findings.

The paper discusses factors for effectively using commercial music to affect A_am, with special focus on advertising processing strategy. Advertisers are urged to exercise extreme caution in using music and to always pretest its use considering factors identified in this paper. The paper suggests ways in which the model can guide future research.

The paper integrates diverse literatures and outlines the major variables comprising our model of consumer response to advertising music. Advertisers can use these variables as a checklist for factors to consider in selecting ad music.

To delineate the range of consumer responses to life‐conditions where sustained powerlessness is experienced. To provide a framework to understand the ways in which these consumers try to reclaim degrees of self‐empowerment and wellbeing.

Goffman's conceptualization of stigma is employed to study a heavy metal music enclave consisting of lower socioeconomic consumers, who exhibit a range of stigmatizing attributes.

A taxonomy of ten consumer remedies for their situation is developed. These include: resignation, confrontation, withdrawal, engagement, concealment, escapism, hedonic, spiritual, nostalgia, and creative. Each can potentially have negative or positive consequences. However, we found consumers often use a blend of these remedies as pathways to self‐empower.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each of the remedies will potentially guide public policy makers in shaping programs better able to foster self‐empowerment among disadvantaged consumers.

The paper advances understanding of consumer response to sustained powerlessness as consequence of disadvantaged life conditions that are resistant to change.